The Mongolian Outback: Day 2 - The Road to the White Stupa

On American Independence Day, we woke up in our roadside ger without a scratch. The kids were still asleep so I decided to leave the ger and explore our camp area’s surroundings. Weather in Mongolia is harsh. We were here in July and based on the wind would go from wearing long sleeve shirts and jackets to shorts and t-shirts while outside. Possibly due to the extreme weather, all animals seem to try to co-exist. Even the insects.

The insects in Mongolia are friendly. Horse files here don’t bite. I’ve been bitten by a few over my life. In Texas we have a few that roam around our pool and we always jump underwater, try to swat kill them, or freak out in some way when they get too close. And the Texas ones like to chase you. However, in Mongolia, I’d look down, see a horsefly on me, shoo it away or let it sit there, and never get bitten. Also, on this particular morning, 5 minutes after I’d put on my shirt, left the ger, and was walking around, I started fishing around in my shirt. A two-inch, black beetle with pincers, like a stag beetle, had been riding shotgun in my shirt. I’d felt something along my upper waistline since I’d left the ger, but thought it was a scratchy clothing tag. I lifted up my shirt and there the little sucker was. I gently grabbed him with my hand and laid him on the ground. After 5 minutes of not pinching me and hanging on for the ride, he just walked away simpatico like.


I continued on to a flat rock formation nearby and could hear birds chirping. There were no trees nearby, not a bird in the sky, and I couldn’t find a one of them. It’s like they were invisible. Another Mongolian oddity. You can hear them in the video below. I also started to see what happens when you have a cold, dry country with a lot of animals. You see a lot of bones lying around.

 I headed back, we had breakfast, boarded the Starex and headed out. On our drive today we came across our first flock of sheep and goats with humans. They were at a manually operated well pumping water for the animals. As these animals had reason to stay nearby the water, the kids had the opportunity to try to pet them.

As we continued on, we passed by an auto accident. Four older Europeans, I think a mix of German, Dutch and/or Polish people, had been self-driving in Mongolia. They were driving on a highway section, had encountered a pothole, slammed on the breaks, and lost control. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. All had their seatbelts on.

As the second day of driving continued, actually riding because I wasn’t driving, I started to settle in and decided it was time to make friends with my two liter of beer. Would my new friend make the journey fun? You bet ya he would. He also proved to be a good enough companion to keep you happy, but not too much of a live wire to push you over the edge. What’s a brother gonna do when riding in a van across 50 mile horizon landscapes on dirt paths with a constant bumpity bump from the earthen road? A brother’s gonna drink.

 The Hyundai Starex had three rows. This meant that Bayaná and Toya were up front and Soledad, Vicente, Milagro, and I would spread between the two remaining rows. When we were lucky, we used the Milagro/Vicente in the middle row and Soledad/Michael in the back row. However, as a 3 and 9 year old can be wont to bicker or fight when stuck next to one another, we often had to divide up the kids and play man-to-man defense. Sometimes this was just giving the child pair enough room to sleep in the car. Other times it mean inventing things to do like digital tic-tac-toe or trying to learn the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet.

Later we arrived at Tsagaan Suvarga (White Stupa). Tsagaan Suvarga is an eroded landscape that was once beneath the sea. Due to this and its chalk type formation, it has both rich marine fossils and some cool erosion patterns. We had entered the Middle Gobi area and from the eroded edges of the White Stupa you could see a long way. We also felt the Mongolian, high-altitude wind.

We hiked with the kids down to the lower recesses. Looking back at the 30 meter walls I half expected Jawas to poke their eyes out. The kids found a small, partially complete skeleton of an animal so we used that as an opportunity to talk about erosion and the different types of rocks.

We continued 10 kilometers further to our next ger. This one was owned by a family with a heard of camels. We had fully entered the Gobi. That night, Soledad and I woke up to go pee outside (remember no toilets in a ger). I’ve never seen more stars in the sky. As you looked up in the frigid you could see the Milky Way plainly.

We also realized that people can be quite inventive with pillow stuffing. Ours were filled with hundreds of these small, brown nut shells.