The South Gobi

Yesterday John commented about the effort required to build the Budist temple in Erdenedalai. It was built in the late 18th centry to commemorate the first ever visit by a Dalai Lama to the area. The architecture was stunning, all wood with a roof with pointed corners that curved upward and huge support beams painted in bright colors.

The inside was like stepping back in time. It too was all wooden with streamers and mobiles hanging from the high celing rafters. One side was lined with large drums. Prayer scrolls wrapped in colorful cloth were stacked at the front along side photos of the current Dalai Lama. The sun came in through the windows in slanted streaks illuminating the two long benches leading to the front alter. The carpets on them were worn and dented from monks who sit hours on end in meditation.

What impressed John the most was the amount of wood used to build the temple. Where did it come from? We hadn't seen a tree for hundreds of kilometers, only the knarly, old, saxaul trees which serve as anchors for the desert sand. They stands all of six inches tall.

Perhaps it would have been more economical to build the temple out of bones. Those were in abundance. Seeing so many bleached out rib cages lying about gave me a sense of reality to the harshness of the Gobi. When we hiked up into the Zuun Saikhan Uul mountains, and looked back at our van - a patch of bleary grey in a sea of blue and brown that stretched forever just below the horizon - I felt vulnerable. That was our lifeline.

The South Gobi is different than I imagined. I didn't expect to see cliffs and mountains. The Flaming Cliffs contains fascinating red rock formations. This is the area where dinosaur eggs complete with embryos were first found. We hiked into the valley below the cliffs on our own archeological mission.

"There's an egg," John shouted. He pointed to a large egg-shaped stone sticking out from a sandstone rock. There were markings around it as if someone had tried to chisel it out. "Could be," I said.

So much of the sandstone has been erroded and smoothed by wind that it was hard to tell if anything we found that was cylindrical and bone-looking was genuine. But we decided that believing was 95% of discovery and we spent an hour or more exploring and shouting, "I found a femer." and "Look at the size of this pelvis. It's enormous." When we climbed to the top of a cliff we had a stunning view of an eerie desert moonscape. Out in the distance, against a curtain of wiggling heat waves, were the mountains we were heading for.

"How many kilometers? John asked when we were back at the van. Butar pressed his arm and head through the sliding glass partition that separated the driver compartment and pushed his chubby finger into the layer of dust on the table. "200 Km," he wrote. He started the engine and we bounced away from the cliffs, creating a track as we went, into a Gobi no-man's land.

For hours we bounced over the same dull landscape. A pack of gazelles scattered in front of us. Camels had to move when Butar sped toward them. But that was the only excitment. John and I kept changing places to take turns at the only semi-comfortable seat in the van. It helped cushion the blow from one the many bone-shifting stops or orbital bounces we endured.

Our butts were killing us, and the hot, dry wind that poured into our windows left us in a heat-induced stupor. I reached for a water bottle. Hot. It didn't quench me. What did revive me was something else I didn't expect to find in the Gobi.

Yolan Am lies in the Gurvansaikhan National Park. It is a lush valley of green set inside high green mountains. There is a meandering stream that runs through a canyon. There are ibix and argila sheep and yak. And, there is ice. In the winter the glacier is reported to be ten meters thick. When we reached it on our hike, we found much of it melted, but still there was at least a meter of ice to cross and the slightest tinge of blue was still glowing from within it.

It was cool in the canyon and the herders that we passed were wearing the traditional Mongolian del costume - a long, one-piece, bright colored robe made from wool and a sash tied at the waste. It seemed an appropriate outfit here, but we had seen people wearing this same outfit in the heat of the desert and we wondered how they could stand it.

From Yolan Am we went to Dunganee Am, also with the park. It was another opportunity for a hike into a canyon. A river led the way as the walls got closer and closer until they were just a few meters apart and then, as if the canyon had been chiseled away from the otherside, and it opened up into expansive and dramatic view of the desert. The river was suddenly gone, the heat waves flickered in the distance, mirages hugged the horizon. I looked back from where we had come. It was like two different worlds.