Curd ice cream and dinosaur eggs

5th August 2017
Before breakfast we visited the ruins of the Ongi Monastery. Today there is just a small temple that is surrounded by the ruins of the old monastery that again was victim to the Stalinist purges in the 1930s. The monastery was once home to 1,000 lamas.
Last night's camp is in the region called Middle Gobi, today we drive into the Gobi desert itself and on to Bayanzag. The first part of the drive was once again out on the Steppe, so flat you could see mirages. We stopped at a shaman Ovoo, walked around it three times deposited three stones and had a group photo. When we set off again we had more Khashaa cam action. We stopped with a herd of camels to take photos. Robert found three nice stones that he wanted to take home so Kenzo left three crackers to make up for them. If you take something you should leave something or you will have bad look.
Later in the day we stopped at a small town on the edge of the desert and brought some curd ice-cream. It tastes a little bit like sour yoghurt but I'm not sure I would choose it if it was in the freezer back home. Anyway we have left the rain behind and we are back to hot weather so something cool is nice. There are a couple of young children near the shops, a boy and a girl, Kenzo has a word with them and then returns from the bus with a few of our group gifts for them.
We then drive into the Gobi Desert. The terrain is sand with small bush like plants. We stopped for lunch near some sand dunes. At least today we can have lunch outside. Khashaa and Puujee set up the stools in the shade of the bus. After lunch we have an explore up and around the dunes, even here in the desert you can find some small delicate little flowers. When I return to the bus Kenzo is playing some Gobi music on his phone, it's a mixture of the horse head fiddle and throat singing.
Not to far from our camp for the night is a well with a generator to pump the water to the surface. There are normally animals drinking at the well and the plan is for us to help water the animals, but when we get there there is not a single one.
Tonight's camp is called the Gobi Tour Ger Camp, it's a medium sized shared camp with nice toilets and showers. Near the camp are the Flamming Cliffs. In the 1920's a large team of USA palaeontologists, lead by Roy Chapman Andrews, came to Mongolia to try and prove that all animal life including man originated from Mongolia. They did not find evidence of that but at the Flamming Cliffs they found dinosaur bones and the first dinosaur eggs every found. Some of the eggs were cracked and they could see the fossil of an half hatched dinosaur. Shortly after arriving at camp we watched a short documentary about the 1920s expedition which was made from the original film footage.
After dinner we all walked the 30 minute walk to the Flamming Cliffs. There were little lizards running around but well camouflaged and to quick to get a proper look at. Afterwards the bus picked us up and took us to see the sun set across the cliffs. I asked Kenzo if it was OK for me to walk back to camp, about half of the group decided to join me in the hour long walk back to camp, the moon was nearly full so there was plenty of light and we could always see the camp. As we left Kenzo said watch out for the wolves, my reply - I would really be stoked if we saw a wolf.