We finally caught up to the pack of camels that we had seen before. Most of them were completely unperturbed by us. A couple just curiously looked on…

As the tire was being changed, I strained my eyes on the mountains behind us and I thought I saw an animal on the top of it. Trained my 300X zoom lens and took a shot. Magnified it and realized it only a cow.

Here is the thing though. There was one solitary cow. The whole time. It was just off the top of the mountain. And it did not budge one single foot from where he was. I took quite a few pictures to see what it was up to. It had only two poses – it was either looking towards us. Or it was looking towards the top. The whole twenty minutes or so that we were there!!

Strange!

We had a flat in the middle of nowhere. We were back on the road in 20 minutes but it gave Roger and myself a good chance to be out there to realize once again what vast nothingness and eerie silence is all about. We spotted some local insects, some really big flies, a yellow butterfly and a heard of camel about half a mile away.

I took the picture to keep for my memories a sense of the vastness.

Next we spotted antelopes. Actually our driver spotted them. He has incredible eyes. These antelopes were a little more brave than the gazelles. They let us come a little closer and then ran away. I learnt something from the driver. I asked him (translated thru Sara) how he recognizes a gazelle from an antelope. Apparently, you look at the tail color. A white one means a gazelle. A black one means an antelope.

Saw a bunch of gazelles in the distance. They are very skittish. We were not even within a quarter mile of them but they hightailed it immediately. Th picture is not great – I had to take it quickly from inside the car.

There is absolutely no wifi and virtually no phone connection in the areas we have been for the last couple of days. Between Roger, Sara and the driver, we have two different phone companies covered and everybody is checking ever so often if anybody has some connection. The best we get in certain areas is an Edge connection (very poor data connection). But enough to do WhatsApp.

Headed out about an hour back from our camp to go to the Hongor Sand Dune. It is about a three and a half hour rough ride on some really tough terrain. About an hour into bouncing along the hard surface, suddenly we heard the familiar “ding” sound on a couple of phones (notifying messages have been received).

Everybody yelled “There is connection”. I have no idea why at that spot we got some connection. We were surrounded by nothingness. Not even electric poles. And that had been the case for the last one hour. How did we manage to get connection in that area? Heaven knows!

We immediately pulled over (which is very easy since you do not have to watch out other traffic 🙂 ) and started checking out phones.

I am used to pit stops for bathroom and for food. Now I know that internet is the other basic necessity for which we need pit stops!!

It was in incredible experience watching four of us outside our vehicle pecking on our phones in the middle of nowhere!

Took quite a few pictures of the horses in the early morning. Liked the way the early morning orange rays from the sun defined the silhouette of this mare and her baby. The baby horse stayed within a foot of the mother the entire time. And was very suspicious of a strange looking person going around with an even stranger looking black object!

Because of the geographical position, the sun rises (and sets) considerably south of east (and west).

Got up early in the morning. Mongolians folks – at least in the countryside (I am not sure about Ulan Baatar) like to sleep in late in the morning by our standards. Nobody was around. Which means none of the ten or so guests or six or so workers were out in the open. It was very very quiet. And cold! Temperatures fell rapidly at night.

Went back in the ger, put on a couple of more layers and grabbed the camera to get a few shots of a pack of horses that were grazing near our get camp in the dawn.