A Photo Book......Finally

I've been home for almost three months now.  Time flies.  And the blog seems to have lost it's purpose....although my effort really started to drop off after the first couple of years.  I did finally get my book together of pictures from my travel this past summer.  It's a brief highlight of the things I did and saw. 

Hope everyone has had a great Thanksgiving and start to the holiday season!!

Click here to view this photo book

Mongolia photos

Some pics from my trip last week.

Horseback riding around Lake Khovsgal.

Three weeks ago this was covered in thick ice and my guide couldn't walk further. There are now two blocks left in the shadows of the August sun. 

A reindeer from the reindeer nation people. Those antlers are big! 

Climbing the sand dunes. 

Milk tea dumplings on a rainy day. Yum! 

Some say the Switzerland of Asia (Lake Khovsgal). 

The kids and I after I rode one of their camels. The boy (11) carved some camels from wood and I bought one. They also offered, and I tried, camel's milk. 

An old Russian van. Lots of these left from socialist times. 

There were many herds of horses being raised in Gobi. Here is a mom and baby we drove by. 

One of the gers I stayed in. 

The Olympics building in the capital. Mongolia focused on wrestling, judo, boxing and archery and had some of the best results given their small population (~2 million). 

Riding a camel in Gobi. 

Running camel herd that was previously sitting across our road :). 

Rub-a-dub-dub

I have issues with the showers in Asia. The issue generally being me, not the showers themselves.

One trip to Bali with a friend I took cold showers because the warm water never came. It was okay because it was open air and warm outside. Come to find out, my friend had nice warm showers and I just didn't know how to work the faucet. Unfortunately, that has not been the only time in my three years here.

My first two showers in Mongolia went okay. I had temperatures I could work with and enough water to wash myself. My third shower was only cold water. I am sure I missed a switch or something but I could not wash my hair. It was a cool night and staying warm was more important at that point than clean hair. Although it was a mess after a day on dusty roads and playing in the sand dunes. Oh well, no one is here to see me.

This morning I had the opposite problem. Too hot! Once I figured out how to get the water to the shower spigot and not the tub faucet, I couldn't find any cold water. I could barely keep my hand in the water much less my body. I tried just my hair but it hit my scalp and that was enough of that. To the sink with a cup of water for my hair. It worked okay but not well, so I decided to just try conditioner and at least get the tangles of my rat's nest sorted. About 45 minutes later and no time for breakfast, I had a sufficient braid.

Hopefully it (the braid) lasts until our next destination this afternoon in the north and I can master a new shower ;).