Chinggiss Khaan's capital and the naughty monks

3rd August 2017
The rain returned in the night with a vegence and we had quite a bit of water in our Ger.
Today we leave this camp and head to Karakorum, Chinggis Khaan's 13th century capital. This camp has been our own private camp. It's simple compared to others we will stop in, but it is owned by our chef and the two daughters of the goat herding family have been working here. One serves our food and the other tends the fire for heating the water for the showers. The owner was very upset about the leaking in the Ger's so offered those that like to drink a drink of vodca after dinner last night.
It's still raining in the morning when we leave and the camp team wave us off. Our first stop of the day is not long out of camp on the way back to the main road. There's sand dunes and a lake with swans and other water foul. It look rather nice when we drove past it two days ago but not so much now in the mist and rain.
On the road we stop at a very big Ovoo. At this one people have left items to say thank you, a couple of pairs of crutches and a cast off a leg.
When reach Karakorum it was still raining so we first went to the Karakorum museum, this is rather nice and has displays of stone age finds as well as from the Mongolian empire. It also has a nice coffee shop and proper toilets!
For lunch we drove up a hill overlooking the old capital. Once again Khashaa, ignoring an official car park, went off roaring to get us the best view. Unfortunately the rain to still coming down so lunch was had inside the bus.
After lunch we returned to the car park, we ignored on the way up, to visit the Naughty Monk Rock. Well Kenzo calls it the naughty monk rock, the sign calls it the Penis Stone. The Abott of the local monastery asked how he could stop the young monks from disobeying their Buddhist discipline and seducing the local women. So the penis stone was created and placed in a valley which was unique natural shape similar to the lower part of a women's body. That's not my words they came straight of the information board. Anyway people now pray at the stone when they want to have children, after having the child couples come back to say thank you.
We then head back to the ancient capital and visited the Erdene Zuu Monastery. This was the first Buddhist centre established in Mongolia in the 16th century. Again during Stalin's purge in the 1930's the monks were killed and almost all the temples were destroyed. It is slowly being restored.
A short walk outside the city wall took us to one off three turtle rocks located in this area. Since arriving in Mongolia I have been fighting off a cold probably caught on the airplane, that short walk just about finished me off for the day so I stayed on the bus whilst the others visited the super market and open air market. The visit to the open air market did not take to long as the rain had once more returned.
Tonight's Ger camp is very nice and the Ger's are permanent all year round, we even have electricity and WiFi in the dinning Ger. All this is possible as we are situated just outside of the town. So it is not as simple as our first camp.
This cold has washed me out so I went straight to bed and skipped the evening meal, with the amount we are getting fed I don't think missing one meal will arm me.