Someone came into our ger about 5 am this morning light the fire, but I think it was 7:30/8:00 am when we got up. After breakfast, around 10 am, we set off trekking across a couple of valleys with Flower to see a rock called Turtle Rock, because it looks like a giant turtle! The walk was fantastic; such beautiful countryside. We trekked up and down two valleys to the third one. There are a myriad of wild flowers; horses, cows, yaks, sheep and goat graze freely in the wide open, fencelss land. When we got to Turtle Rock, we climbed up the face of it, a little scary for me because of the height, then down inside it and squeezed ourselves through a fissure to get a fabulous view of the valley on the other side.
On the way back to our ger, we stopped off to visit a Mongolian family living in a ger and were greeted with a bowl of hot cow's milk, some fermented mare's milk ( a type of Mongolian alcohol...ugh!), and some delicious yoghourt and biscuits. We went outside and talked with some of the kids and animals and then went back to our own ger for lunch.
After lunch I settled down to write my journal, but was soon called away to go horseback riding. No resistance there!! We had a simply fantastic ride, trotting, and cantering over the grasslands. The fact that it started to rain didn't dampen our spirits at all. Ray had an unfortunate meeting with the ground as his horse stumbled and Ray lost his seat. His landing was quite soft so no major damage was done, although he may be a little stiff tomorrow. We were absolutely soaked when we got back, and as it continued to pour with rain, we sat in our ger, lit the fire to dry out the clothes, and sat around reading, journal writing, blackbrrying (Jon) and genrally relaxing and whiling away the time till dinner.
What a great surprise we got when we walked into the dining ger and saw Renate with a group of people. You remember that she travelled with us from Kathmandu to Shian? She left us there and went to the Philippines to spend two or three weeks with her friend there. She loved it - had a wonderful time; got her diving licence, lazed on the beach, and relaxed. She is on the Vodka Train, another Sundowner's trip. It was a rather sedate evening but we did have fun playing ankle bone games. This was a couple of games played with sheep's or goat's anke bones. There are 4 sides to each ankle bone: camel, horse, goat, and sheep; all different. In the first game for example, we had 19 fences to jump to win the race. Our "horses" lined up at the beginning. We threw 6 ankle bones as dice. If we threw a horse, we advanced one fence. Great fun!! Then it was bed really early - 10:30 pm. I think our guide thinks we need a lot of rest, or something, anyway, it's all good!!
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