July 13 (Sunday) – Przewalski’s Horses

Some more views from the resort…

then we were off for today’s excursion to hopefully see the only wild horses in the world…the Przewalski Horses at the Hustain National Park.

The parking lots at the racing venue were still packed when we went by, and traffic was bad.  Took us 3 hours - 1 1/2 hours longer than when there is no traffic.

We also passed some nomad camps along the way with their horses. 

We got to Hustain National Park late afternoon and after a bathroom break headed out into the park.  

On hot days in Mongolia the horses don’t come out for water until evening when it is cooler.  We saw some deer…

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    Video of the deer
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and the horses.  How exciting.  Except that they were very far away high on a hill…just little brown/grey dots.

A ranger stopped by and indicated there were more Przewalski Horses farther into the park, but were farther away than ones we were seeing.  So, we did not go farther into the park.

The Przewalski’s (named at the Russian who was the first westerner to identify them) went extinct in the wild in the 1900’s but fortunately a few individuals had been captured and were in Western zoos.  A breeding program was begun and now there are an estimated 2000 of the horses around the world in zoos, Russia, the Ukraine and France.  There are about 450 in here in Mongolia.  The entire world population of Przewalski’s are descended from just 13 individuals. 

We also saw a marmot in the park but he was too far away to get any type of reasonable photo.  But we tried.

Then we headed to the camp at the park’s entrance where we had dinner before heading back to our lodgings.