Looking down the shore of Lake Khovsgol. The water is deceptively clear: in some places you think you could swim to touch the bottom but it’s much, much further down than you think.

A look up the lake from Khatgal, the town at the southern end of the lake.

Here I am inspecting the Mongolian Navy whose home port is Khatgal.

At the top of the mountain behind our ger camp.

My guide, Byambaa. He’s far more fit than I am so I was happy that I beat him to the top. Then again, he paused for 15 minutes to call his girlfriend back in UB.

A beautiful sunset over our ger camp the night before we left.

On the way back to the airport, Byambaa took me by one of the highest concentrations of deer-stones in the world. These are remnants of an older civilization and there have been many interpretations of the markings on them but he said that recent research indicates that the society was a matriarchal one and these stones are monuments to the leaders. They’re called deer-stones because of the deer usually etched into them like in this picture. They believe these represented the tattoos on the leaders’ bodies.

One of the deer-on a deer-stone.

Me next to one of the few deer-stones left that has a person’s head on it.

After seeing the deer-stones, we drove to the airport and flew back to UB.

- Dave