the Gobi, Mongolia

Photo diary (well a teeny tiny part) of our Gobi tour. It also doesn't show the millions of horses, goats, cows, sheep, camels, eagles, vultures, marmots, weird bugs and other unidentified creatues we saw ;)

1) yet another horse and foal - we saw millions!

2) the trendy twins at bayan zag - site of heaps of dinosaur fossil and the edge of what used to be a sea!

3) Yoliin Am ICE gorge - yes that is actually ice in the middle of summer in the middle of the gobi!!!! Very bizarre!
4) cute little squirrel sized creatures we saw in the non-ice parts of the gorge

5) khongor els (sand dunes) - the smudge on the edge is vera collapsing on the way up - I was already at the top (hehe - points for the oldies versus the kids i reckon lol) btw she did make it to the top a few minutes later :D

6) riding 2 humped camels out to the dunes

7) lunch break in middle of the little mountain range we were driving through
8) a tiny part of the ruins of the huge twin monasterys at Ongi - they were destroyed (like nearly all buddhist temples) during the stalinist purges in the 1930's. The monks were mostly killed or imprisoned, the buildings destroyed and in this case the river diverted to a mine.

9) hole in ruins built on island, view through to the lake and grassland

10) a typical view during trip - note the angle of the jeep to the horizon!!!

11) Some really deserty looking gobi :)

12) sunset at Ogii Lake where we chilled for a few days and ve played with all the kids before returning to UB Beautiful lake but looked kinda strange to us cos there was no vegetation higher than a foot and mostly it was just grass.