Animal Crossing

If ever there was a summer to stay in Mongolia, this would be it.  It was mild even by our standards, with lots of cloudy, breezy days hit with heavy showers right around 1 in the afternoon.  The national Naadam was held outside of the city, so locals were pretty scarce, making traffic a dream.  And without foreigners visiting, there also weren't any tourists.

That was great as far as Ulaanbaatar city life, but I felt sorry for the people who depend on the tourism industry for their living.  Souvenir shops, ger camps, tour guides and drivers are all having a lean year.  Fortunately, there was one place I never did check off my Mongolian bucket list in my previous life - Omnogov - so once I finished my latest course I decided to do my part for the economy and went on an adventure.

The Jojo and Enkhaa Express have been taking tours to the South Gobi the last few years, so they were my first choice for tour companies.  They very fortuitously had just returned from a nine-day bike trek around Arkhangai a few days before I was hoping to go.  Believe it or not, this was my first trip into the countryside since coming back a year ago.  Thanks to the mining industry the roads were pretty great all the way to Dalanzadgad, and it was relaxing watching the landscape subtly shift as the kilometers ticked by.

Back to the lack of tourists - although it made life hard for the economy, those of us who did go traveling this summer got a bonus out of the deal.  See, while the places we went in South Gobi aren't exactly close to civilization, they ARE on the well-beaten tourist trail (read: you'll spend a lot of time on washboard roads).  This means that while they should be remote enough to see some interesting wildlife, the parade of Russian vans has a tendency to scare off the animals.

Somebody forgot her good lens....apologies.  Look closely, I promise you'll see the gazelle.

Not so this year!  As we rumbled our way to the big dunes at Khongoryn Els we spotted three black-tailed gazelle - a mother and twin fawns.  Enkhaa stopped for me to shoot them - WITH MY CAMERA, GEESH, what exactly do you think my last name is??? - telling us how luck we were to see twins.  Even before we could pick up speed we saw a few more making their way through the grass.

The landscape constantly changed that day - we went fairly quickly from the dunes to grasslands, where we were greeted by white-tailed gazelle.  They got a little ways from us and then decided they weren't scared of no tourists, standing there flipping their tails at us.  Grasslands changed to hills striped with outcroppings of rocks, which from there built into craggy cliffs.  As the road wound through them, Engrish spotted an ibex at the top of one of the formations, which Enkhaa and I just barely glimpsed before it scampered away.

The khulan are the ones in the front, not to be mistaken for horses.

It was about that time when Engrish asked Enkhaa if he thought we'd see any khulan, a Mongolian species of wild ass (and yes, I had to say "ass" there.  It's never "donkey" in this context.  If you knew my friend named Khulan you'd also want to associate the word with what it means at every possible opportunity).  He told her we wouldn't, that they live in more remote areas.  But almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth we turned a corner and startled three of them into a gallop.

My favorite animals, though, are not really rare here - last year I even saw one on the sidewalk outside our elementary school, although they are an endangered species.  Yolyn Am was our stopping point on the first day, and it is the world's center of cuteness.  This time the first squee was mine, but it zipped into a burrow before Engrish could confirm its existence.  As we continued to hike down the gorge there were little medium-pitched squeaks, and although we hadn't spotted another yet, I deduced they were chattering as they observed us to judge if we were friendlies.  Finally, the pikas revealed themselves and we were swarmed with cuteness.

Pika are small rodents most closely related to rabbits, although I'll forgive you if you think mice are nearer cousins, since the first time I saw one that was precisely my thought.  They don't have tails and they're much bigger than mice, though, and once you see their little noses twitch, or watch them nibble on the foliage the family resemblance is clear.  They even dash more like a rabbit.  And if you were wondering, yes, they are, in fact, the inspiration for Pikachu.