As you travel through Mongolia, you are bound to see a lot of Ovoos. These are basically some hap hazard piles of stones with some colorful pieces of cloth often attached to them. This particular one that we saw had a lot of cattle skulls lined up on one side.

I understand these are sacred to Mongolians and are pretty common in China too. In Mongolia you will often find them on top of hills, in the middle of desert and pretty much anywhere. Some are small and humble and some are big and elaborate.

Active ceremonies would include spreading rice or milk etc around these Ovoos.

Never knew of them. Learnt another new thing.

As you drive thru the vast lands of Mongolia, you are bound to be struck by an oddity – and that is how their electricity distribution poles look. Without exception, they have a concrete lower portion and then a longer wooden portion that seems to be held together by some ropes or something. For the life of me, I have not been able to understand why. Nobody seems to know why.

On the internet, there are some theories that this is driven by the fact that the frozen ground (during extreme cold weathers) can crack the wood. Which raises the question – why not make the whole thing with concrete then?

I have not been able to solve this yet…

It is amazing to realize how these kind of mountain goats (this is a female Ibex) effortlessly move around on very tight ledges of sheer cliffs. Literally a couple of inches of displacement and it is sure to fall to its death. But it never does….

The central square of the city was filled up with a lot of kids and their parents all decked up for the day long festivities. Saw a few ladies walking around with some kind of medal on them.

Found out from our guide Sara that the country honors 555 women every year with a medal. You know what you need to do to earn a medal? If you bear 4 kids, you get the lower level medal and if you have 5 or more kids you get the higher level medal!

I understand the root of this goes back to 1950s and 60s where the country had very few people and they needed the population to grow…

Something tells me this guy went down the staircase reluctantly 🙂

She was effortlessly climbing up the cliffs in Bayanzag while I was deathly afraid of slipping and falling…

Or do those camels look like a bunch of ostriches to you too? The head, the way they look, the legs.. everything says “ostrich”

Not sure what this one had done to early a red flag!!