snap shots of our travellers' life

wanna see how we lived during the tour? hardly ever access to running water (let alone hot, or even warm, water) and outside-toilets or mongol-style toilets almost all the time. we had electricity twice: once at the beginning in UB and once at the end back again in UB. food? let's not even go there... what else? ah yes, sand and dust in our ears and between our teeth and inside our sleeping bags and everywhere else...

this was our first camp site. nowhere nothing and no one, regardless where you look.



except for this tiny little lake.



a toilet break. go find yourself a little hidden place here...



putting up the tent.



this is how it looked like when everything was set up. this was our second night - and the driver had already taken apart the jeep to fix something that broke during the day...



on the way to the Gobi, our driver is testing the ground to know whether the jeep will be able to drive across it, or whether we might fall through and get stuck in possible mud spots.

they say it rains once every ten years in the Gobi. well, guess which year we had this year... which explains potential mud places in the desert.



a typical ger entrance in a tourist ger camp.



a typical tourist ger camp set-up, with a building serving as 'restaurant/bar', and another one for showers and toilets (almost western-style!).



a mongol ger camp at the sand dunes in the Gobi.



preparing to cook dinner inside the ger.



the next morning.



on top of the sand dunes.



another night in the tent and again nothing and no one, not even animals anymore, around us.





as i said, nothing and no one around us...



on another morning, after another cold night in the tent, our driver is lying underneath the jeep to fix something else again, whereas we are still busy with breakfast and packing up.



in a local restaurant, a humangeous (and delicious!!!) meal with a bit of local beer. feels like paradise, after one week of eating à la camping style...



one night we had to flee into a 'hotel' (because the wheather was so bad, it was freezing cold and raining non-stop - the tent would only have caused us a nice pneumonia, and there were no gers nearby) - this was our room. the beds were so soft that it was more comfortable to sleep on the ground.





this was the toilet belonging to the hotel. in the back yard. where of course you first had to get out front, onto the street, go around the corner and into the yard, and there it was, the toilet house!



and this was the inside of it... try not to fall in between...



the hotel. recently built. no running water. but - no holes in the roof!!!



the view in the morning from another mongol ger where we stayed.



this is where we spent our last night, with a nomad family who left us their ger for the night.



breakfast on the last morning of the tour, before returning to UB later in the day. looking tired and exhausted, or what?!