gobi.

i never really knew what to expect from the desert, apparently its what experts call a cold desert so what, am i expecting ice? nope, the woman at our hostel in Ub says if u sleep on the ground ur friend will be putting you in the back of the van the next day. what does that even mean. there are no supermarkets, no showers, no electricity she continues. ok i'll just take a fuck load of munch and a few changes of warm clothes (my first day outfit was winter jacket, shorts and tights).

when our car arrived we realised to our pleasure that we were to be driving around teh desert in a converted 4x4 soviet ambulance, part of Mr Kim's fleet of 8 or summit like that. teh sesat werre fairly comfy and i driver looked like a socialble enough guy, even if his english was limited. because victoria suffers from travel sickness she sat in the front by the driver, swo teh back 5 seat that all faced eachother were left for the lads. apart from me and pierre and steve we were joined by athis guy called paul, who used to sell internet advertising from his bosses house in barnsbury and craig who works in something to do in computing in cambridge.

teh 5 of us made a pretty varied group which didnt limit the conversation which was very good indeed as we were driving for up to 7 hours everyday. every night we stayed in a nomadic family's spare ger and they provided us with dinner and breakfast. dinner was usually very limited, most of the time for the meat eaters it was mutton and rice and the mutton was usually replaced by mushrooms for me, but a few times i just got rice with ketchup or something that resembled gruel. at night we mostly just played cards and drank vodka and went to be pretty early , because in most places a lack of electricty tends to limit your nightime activity, the actual family's ger was usually equipped with solar panel and satellite dish so they were living the highlife.

most days we were just visiting 'rock formations' but the best days were the 4th and 5th, where after staying teh night in the 'city' of dalanzagdag (one road,. lots of gers) where we got the best food, we went into teh national park where we say an ice waterfall, (which was pretty impressive as i havnt seen that many non-ice waterfalls either) then we had a walkj down an ice valley. that night we satyed by teh sand dunes in our own ger - the family cooked us dinner then fucked off, so we made a camp fire. and took lots of long exposure photos. the next morning we finally got to ride some camels and rode them up to teh sand dunes which we then climbed up. unfortunatel if u dont have a sandboard of some sort of sled or disc then you cant slide down them which would have been fun. when we got back down our camel guides invited us for a wrestle, 2 of teh three mongolians i have wrestled to and lost to to date. and then a steve, craig, pierre and victoria did a bit of rigged camel racing, which made our guide a few thousand togrogs.

on the 2 day drive back to UB from the sand dunes a few of us started to go mad, steve especially, it was his turn to ride backwards and he didnt really want to see anymore desert, he was getting a bit annoyed at craig as well, lets just say there personalities clashed a bit. paul kept us entertained with his stories and sexual escapades, as well as all his different uses of slang, steve also kept us entertained with his 'non' sex-tourist stories of thailand. he's not really but it was fun to wind him up about it.

when we finally hit tarmack again just outside UB we thought we had finally made it but we went over one bump to many and our accelerater cable snapped, baira our driver though just got soime wire and tied it back together, the genius. everyone was happy to get back to teh comforts of the city and wash, (pierre had been wearing the same clothes for 7 days) and we all went and had a pizza and went out that night.