Gerbil in the Ger

7th August 2017
This morning after breakfast I was sorting out my rucksack when a movement by the open Ger door caught my eye. Inside the Ger was a gerbil, it then ran behind the material hanging down covering the Ger wall. On the outside of the Ger on the side it ran I found a hole in the wall so hopefully it went out that way. The camp staff are going to block up the hole. It reminds me of an old Mongolian song. "I saw a gerbil, Where? There in the Ger, Where in the Ger? Right there, a little gerbil with horse boots on going clip-clippety-clop in the Ger". Having looked around near the Ger I found lots of gerbil burrows.
After the excitement of the wild animals roaming my Ger we headed back to the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains and the Gurvan Saikhan National Park. Today's walk was a little longer than yesterday's but still not that far. Again it was following a gorge but this time it had a stream running through it, the Yol stream. It was a lovely meandering gorge with Pika's running around in the lower slopes. Sometimes there is still ice in the gorge but not today. When we set out it was a lovely warm clear day but as we were returning the storm clouds gathered. Kenzo told me that Mongolian weather never use to be so changeable, may be this is an effect of global warming. Anyway just as I got back to the bus the hail and rain started so we had our third lunch in the bus. BTW, nice Landy in the car park.
After lunch we drove the 10km back to the park gate and the Nature Museum, the collection of dinosaur eggs was interesting but the collection of stuffed birds and mammals including a snow leopard was a bit off putting. Apart from the fact that they are stuffed animals they looked a little worse for wear. Well I guess I would if I was stuffed.
Our camp is just 4km from the city of Dalanzadgad, which is good as we have an early flight in the morning back to Ulaanbaatar. Breakfast is at 5:45! Whilst we are flying back and visiting some of the Ulaanbaatar sites, Khashaa and Puujee have to drive the vehicles back. Although most of the route down here was off road, we headed west before turning south, I understand there is a tarmac road between the two cities that they will use. That said it's still a long drive for them to do in a short time(600km). After one night in Ulaanbaatar we will be heading to a mountain Ger camp for two nights and Khashaa will be driving us again, we are not sure about Puujee he may be on another job and we will have a different luggage driver. If that is the case he will catch up with us for our final group meal on our last night.