ORUG NUUR LAKE – SHANDUN THAL CANYON

Yet, the scenery is awesome here and driving by the stony hills is nice and easy, we don’t stress too much over the delay. We have just found out that the only language our Mongolian driver Buho speaks is his native Mongolian, but he also is clueless about the geography. However, we succeed to find the cave hidden in between mountain mass. It’s much smaller that the one we’ve attended before, there is also no single wall painting, though the information tells us there must be some. The cave is significant because it was a dwelling of a Buddhist monk during the Communistic repressions. On our way to Bayanlig where we plan to tank with oil and water before entering the Central part of Gobi, we accidentally run into an awesome canyon. It could even compete with the ones in North America. Around 7PM, when we just begin to drive towards Nemegetin, Janis’s forward tyre bursts. It happen right when we are driving through one smaller but as amazingly beautiful canyon, so we decide to stop here for the night. Scenery seems to be taken from the American Indian movies. Following the atmosphere we decide to make a movie evening. Tonight it’s Jim Jarmoush’s “Dead Man” with Johnny Depp. There is no better place to watch this movie. Instead of Indians we meet some local people who come to see us with their Russian construction bike. For a while they jump around us, our bikes and our laptop, they seem to never have seen such things before. Then we are having tea and exchange the tobacco. Instead of the pipe we have Russian cigarette but it totally doesn’t matter at the moment.