Calmly Camping the Countryside

Alright everybody here’s the deal: I wrote a post the week when we were on the countryside but I never posted it because we weren’t on wifi. I’ve been back for over a week and I have already reverted back to my lazy ways. I apologize. Alright well here you go.

It is our last day on the countryside and I am feeling bittersweet about it. The places we have visited have been absolutely beautiful. For sure the best views I saw the whole entire trip (I am bad at technology so I’m not uploading any pictures on here but I’m sure someone else will). Despite the beautiful views and the incredible people we met, the countryside was probably my least favorite part of the trip though. I guess I’m a city girl! I don’t really enjoy camping, for many reasons including bugs, dirt, and the not so cleanly hygiene habits.

We stayed at three different places over five nights and six days. The road to our first place was bumpy and long to say the least. I’m pretty sure our tour guides got lost and we were wandering around the countryside for a few hours. I was only slightly panicking that we would never find where we were staying and we would run out of gas and have no reception to call anyone and then we’d die. Again only SLIGHTLY panicking… But it was fine because we got there eventually. We stayed in these tiny little cabins. They were pretty cute during the day, but at night they were bug infested and that was NOT cute. The second day at this place we went hiking and we saw a wild horse! That was pretty amazing. We watched the stars one night. I saw two shooting stars and more stars than I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

The second place was more like a campsite instead of a few cabins in the middle of nowhere. There were warm showers so of course this was my favorite of the three places. We stayed in gers which are like yurts but way cuter on the inside. There was a fireplace in the middle of it, probably my favorite thing about the ger. I just think fireplaces are really fun. Someone would come in at night before bed and in the morning to add wood and get the fire started. Then it would get really toasty. I would lie there happily in my sweatshirt under a blanket, but my roommate would have to open the door because she was so hot. While at the second place we saw a monastery and a museum. We also saw lots of cows and lots of blue sky.

The final night was spent at a lake. We stayed in a ger again, but these ones weren’t quite as nice. This place had the most bugs but the water was beautiful. Being away from water was one of the weirdest things for me about being in Mongolia. This lake was considered sacred, which meant that only men could swim in it. So sadly, I did not go swimming.

Anyway, thanks for reading! I can’t believe we’re leaving in TWO days! :)

#Donna