Gobi Desert, Day 5.

We awoke to clear skies and quiet after the previous night's storm. Our last morning for fried dough and mare's milk, our last time muddling through conversations in faux-Mongolian, our last time trying to acquire drinkable water in the desert. And, we soon found, we'd miss it.

We started off by helping to build a mini-ger - our host has built a scale model of a ger, with all the appropriate framing pieces, that can be assembled in the proper order and with the proper connections. It was amazing, and I don't know if they understood why we were so excited [archi-nerd alert]. It even had all the proper furniture and fitments, and a mini stove that actually worked [she filled it with smoking dung for the final touch]. 

After we built the mini-ger, we went on another walk and found some caves, and climbed some more rocks. We were supposed to get ourselves to Mandalgovi to catch the bus back to Ulaanbaatar, but the jeep didn't show up. We got a call on our hosts' cell phone [yes, cell phone] that the bus wasn't running, so a mini-bus would be picking us up instead. And, so it did: full of Mongolians. We climbed in the back seat, and the driver [shirtless of course] commenced the 6 hour jostling back to UB. We only had one flat tire [for the changing of which our driver put on his work pants over his regular pants. Still no shirt, but got to protect those pants!] At one stop, he produced a bag of fried dough balls covered in sugar and a carton of ACE juice, which we all shared using one cup. It was like a delicious pre-school snack. The ride was bordering on epic: too bumpy to talk, draw, read, or hear anything, the highlights were watching the scenery and placing mental bets on whether the bus would make it up a hill in 1st gear or if a walking goat would pass us, laughing.

We got to UB, but then it took 2 hours to navigate the city traffic, get a cab from the bus station, and collapse at our hostel. That night I had one of the top five showers of my life: even tepid water out of a broken handheld showerhead in a room with no curtain is glorious after five days of dirt, sand, goats, sheep, dirt, horses, camels, sand, mare's milk, dirt, sheep's ankle bones, hiking, flat tires, dirt, and collecting dung.

Assembling a mini-ger.

Adding the roof rafters [toono]. Note the furniture and carpets inside...

Putting on the roof felt.

It's done! A real one takes about an hour to assemble.

Big ger, little ger.

The Gobi, from on top of a rock formation.

The back seat of a Mongolian mini-bus. My foot is resting on a fuel container, which could contain gas or vodka.

The mini-bus. There were ten of us in there.

And, because I'm my father's daughter: the Trans-Mongolian, enroute to Beijing across the Gobi.