Dave & Meredith's Travel Blog

I’ve posted a gallery of pictures from my recent trek through Mongolia. You can click here to see it or look at the list of galleries on the Photo Galleries page. I’ve also posted a short video of our guides singing a Kazakh folk song on our last night camping – click here to see […]

I had two days in Ulaan Baatar before flying back the States. I mixed it with some souvenir/gift shopping and some sightseeing.   A Mongolian band playing on the side of one of the bigger cashmere stores in Ulaan Baatar. They were pretty good and the guy was really good at different kinds of throat-singing. […]

After the horse trek in the west was finished, I went to the north of Mongolia for a few days to check out the area around Lake Khövsgöl. The lake is known for how deep it is and the clarity of its water. It’s big enough that it contains about 1% of the world’s fresh […]

When I went to Mongolia in 2008, one of my memories was that I felt a bit sore after some of the longer days in the saddle. The saddles are supplied by the local Kazakh guides and are called “Russian cavalry” saddles. They are basically a steel and wood frame with a leather cushion on […]

When we’re at camp, things are pretty relaxed. Once you get your tent set up, you can go hiking or for a ride if there’s time. One site is my favorite for simply walking upriver past several streams so you can look down an intersecting valley. Our group of camels posed nicely along the way […]

Although there were a few camp sites where we stayed more than one night, life on the trail typically began in the morning with packing up and moving on. We used camels for carrying our gear – about 7 or 8 of them. After getting your own gear packed up, you’d hand it over to […]

We spent the first two days of our time in the park getting used to our horses and meeting the local Kazakhs who would be our horse and camel wranglers. They all lived in the area – one family’s group of gers was a short distance behind our site at the bottom of the mountain: […]

Now that I’ve been home a week and I’m getting back into some routine, I have some time to write a few posts about the trip. After about 30 hours of flying, I finally got into Ulaan Baatar and a solid night’s sleep in the hotel. We spent the next day or two there exploring […]

I’m very disappointed that the elevator warning sign that I posted about last year has been replaced in the meantime by one that is properly translated. While the sign outside that says “Do Not Recline For Dangerous Fall Down” is still there, the big one inside described in this post is now completely rewritten in […]

I’ve been back in Ulaan Baatar for a couple of days and it’s been great to get full nights’ sleep in a bed followed by long, hot showers. After some shopping and dining out with new friends, it’s now time for a quick side trip up to Lake Khovsgol and I leave for the airport […]