Driving the Lake Region

Scenes from a long day of driving.

A picturesque viewpoint.

Local town.

A large hawk or eagle.

The motorcycle is replacing the horse.

Herding yaks.

Late in the day the rain got quite heavy.

Thursday, July 5^th.

We left at 7:30 this morning for a long day of driving. We drove for the whole day through a few valleys, on very rough ‘roads’ that were really two-wheel tracks, over dirt, rocks and mud. We forded a number of small streams. We drove past a few small towns and thousands of sheep, goats and yaks. There was very little traffic on the roads that we travelled.

Today Tony, Bryan and I sat in one car in order to relieve a bit of stress that is building up within the group. We had some good talks and spent some quiet time as well.

We stopped in the provincial capital for lunch at a restaurant that had wi-fi, so for the first time in a week we could check our e-mails.

After lunch, when we stopped for a viewpoint at the entrance to Khövsgöl NP, where there were people selling souvenirs. The weather which had been mostly sunny and warm, turned cloudy and cool. We drove on and turned off onto a very rough road and the rain came down. It took us over an hour to go thirty kilometres because of the terrain. We arrived at camp in the rain and settled into our new ger. Our new camp is on the shores of Khövsgöl Lake, one of the largest lakes in Asia. This is as far north as you can go in Mongolia and is only a few kilometres from the border with Siberia in Russia. We hung out for a bit in our ger before the rain stopped and we went to the camp kitchen for dinner. Tony and I had a beer and talked to Letitia a little while before retiring.