We had a good night sleep perhaps thanks to copious amounts of beer drunk from a 2.5L plastic soft drink bottle!!!! Yup their local beer comes in that size. We’re thinking of grabbing one for our train journey tomorrow.
We said hearty thank yous to our host family around 10 and left to find some wild horses. But not before getting dressed in traditional Mongolian costumes called Del for a photo op. The nomad couple lent us their finery - very warm long coats lined with sheep and goat fur, silver belts, yellow silk cloth as belt for men, furry hats - which was good fun!
Along the way we stopped at Lun, a town half way through our drive back eastward to UB, for lunch. Once again it has the windswept look, with dingy looking houses and buildings doubling up as shops, restaurants and bars. And there are many Chinggis Khan things, from barbeque to supermarkets to tourist camps to vodka bottles.
We reached Hostei National Park around 2.30 in the afternoon. It’s a 50,000 hectares of protected steppe landscape which boasts numerous kinds of flora and fauna as well as animals, especially the Tekh, the predecessor of domesticated horses as we know today. Tekh, or wild horses, originated in Mongolia and in Hostei.
They were given to a few countries in the late 19th century and after they died out in the wild, Dutch scientists brought a few back in the mid 1990s to Hostei and now there are about 150 of them. They apparently have different number of chromosones to domesticated ones, and are also different in physical appearances - their neck is shorter and so are their manes and tails.
They also come in mostly one colour - Beige. We had an old man with a pair of binoculors as a guide in our quest for wild horses in the park. We first found about 1,000 domesticated horses close to the base camp - a group of nomads have brought them for greener pastures after a harsh winter which has left many looking skins and bones.
We didn’t have to venture far - from a glimpse of a lone wild horse on a distant mountain grazing, we came upon a group of 7, with one baby horse, about 200m away. We rushed out of the car, I got my telephoto lens ready (thanks Chrissy!) and got close to them, like 50m!
They didn’t bat an eyelid and kept on trotting and grazing alternately. It was pretty amazing. Unfortunately photos won’t come till I get home as in my excitement I forgot to take any with my blackberry. Ah well… Today’s our last day out in the wild. We’re staying the night in a ger in the Ger District in north UB. I’m already missing the wide, open spaces and friendly nomads, especially the children, with their rosy cheeks, easy laughter and trusting nature. Ko Bu and I are devising ways to kidnap them!
