Drive Back to UB -- 7/29

Road closed for repairs, no temporary road provided -- DIY

Today reminded us that our travel company's middle name is 'Adventure', tho this was not quite the adventure we signed up for. We had a long drive planned to get back to the capitol and prep for our next camp. On the way, we were scheduled to visit a national park and look for horses. We set out early and encountered two roadblocks right away....a pile of dirt spread across the road and the opportunity to create your own path around it....remember, we are on full-sized bus. The first one was no problem, but the drop off on the second was kind of steep, so we all got off the bus and walked around the blockade while the bus leaned precariously down the embankment and made it back to the road safely.

So here are the guys pushing, like it could help move a 9 ton bus...

Several hours later (about 30-45 min late due to bad roads), we turned off the main road to go to Khustai National Park, home to most of the re-introduced Prezwalski's horses in the world. They went extinct in the wild around 1969, and zoo programs brought them back. The 13km dirt road soon became sand and the bus got stuck. Seriously stuck. We all got off again and helped scavenge wood to throw under the stuck left rear wheel. Two buses came by..the first blew by, but the second smaller one stopped and called his bigger partner back. Soon there were 3 bus loads of people watching, and taking goofy pictures of someone pulling on the tow rope that appeared.

Three times the big bus tried to pull us out with all the men in back pushing and only succeeded in breaking the rope and digging in deeper. We were invited onto the other buses with Korean youth who had been planting trees in Mongolia for the last week. Jim and I ended up on different buses, so I had quite a long discussion with the young men next to me, who wanted to practice their English. One of them gave me a Korean name (sounded sort of like groom) that means cloud and said we should be facebook friends.
 

Prezwalski's horses on a distant ridge -- 18X lens helped a lot.

At the park, we had lunch and went on our tour. We apparently saw two horses on top of a hill 5 miles away and Jim said he saw a red deer a couple miles in the other direction. (The horses DID show up in my photo, but I couldn't see them.) We did see 3 marmots, but they were all too fast to photo.

At 4 we were done, and Billy commandeered a minivan to take him back to the bus. By 6, we were getting worried...we were still 2-3 hours from the hotel, and if the bus didn't get unstuck, we would need a replacement to come from UB....on a Sunday evening. Just as the worry factor was getting bad, Billy reappeared to say the bus was unstuck and we were finally on our way again.

He and the minivan driver had had quite an adventure looking for farm tractors willing to help and truly driving cross country. The farmer who pulled out the bus wanted about $95 to help, but the minivan driver didn't ask for anything. We are glad to be back in a bed of more American softness, and repacked everything for our flight to Khovsgol Lake tomorrow to meet their more severe weight limitations.