Kharkorin & Hustai National Park

Yesterday afternoon we arrived at Erdene Zuu Khiid; one of the largest tourist attractions in Mongolia. The monastery was built hundreds of years ago, but it had been demolished during the Communist purges in the 1930s. I was excited to arrive here; this was one of the top 5 things that I wanted to see in Mongolia. Our guides had informed us that we were seeing about 20% of the original content at Erdene Zuu Khiid. When the Buddhists had heard the Communists were on their way, the local community helped them hide religious icons and artifacts. In the 1990s, when the Communist government collapsed, the local families gave the Buddhist items back to the monastery when the rebuilding began. The majority of the buildings are Chinese in architecture, and there was one building that was in the Tibetan format. I was impressed by the scale of it all; I can only imagine what it looked like a hundred years ago.

In the morning, we headed towards Hustai National Park. We stopped at a camp that was situated along a vein of sand dunes that ran throughout the landscape. I think that we were at least 100km from the Gobi desert, and it was rather odd to see all of this sand. I took a few desert photos, ate lunch, and climbed back in the jeep - I was eager to have a chance of catching a glimpse of the tekhi, Mongolia's only wild horses.

As soon as we arrived at the tourist ger camp, we headed into the park. Within 15 minutes, we saw some tekhi, although they were at least 60 meters away. We continued to drive into the park, until we came to a plateau that had wonderful views of the surrounding valleys. After climbing to the top of a small mountain, I was cold enough to get back into the jeep and return to the camp. Gege was somewhere on the side of the mountain, without his jacket. He was so upset that he couldn't keep up with me (he was worried about my safety), that he left his jacket behind. After a few minutes of searching in the oncoming dusk, we found his jacket. On our way back to the camp, we saw a large group of tekhi. I approached them as slow and non-threateningly as I could, and I was able to get great photos. It felt like a safari in Africa - we were out hunting for the horses, and there were no fences to keep them in one area.