July 23 (Wednesday) – Flying West Oglii and Lake Tolbo

Today we fly to far western Mongolia…and the flight leaves early.  It is amazing how light the traffic is in Ulaanbaatar at 5:30 in the morning. 

The flight into Oglii gave us some amazing views from the windows of the plane.  Dry, desolate landscape with beautiful, snow-covered mountains in the distance. 

The airport is very small, so we had to go down the stairs from the airplane and walk to the airport…one of the cutest, prettiest airports we have visited.

We were met by our guide, Bez, and two drivers…we will be traveling in two separate 4X4s for this part of the trip. We were in the hotel by mid-morning.  Our hotel rooms weren’t ready when we got into town, so we left the luggage with the drivers and headed out for a walking tour. 

First stop was the large square directly behind our hotel.  We visited the main statue in the middle of the square,

and another one nearby. 

Then we wandered over to the Museum of Bayan-Ulgii where they had some interesting artifacts from the area,…

displays regarding horses,…

and a lot of taxidermies of local fauna.

In this area of Mongolia most people are Kazakh and speak Kazakh as a first language with Mongolian their second.  This area is very close to Kazakhstan, Russia and China. 

Then we hit a souvenir shop and had lunch at a local restaurant.

They had some really good empanada type Mongolian specialty.   

Some random Ulgii photos. 

Then we headed out for a drive in the countryside.  It seems a lot drier here than in other parts of the country...it looked even drier than the Gobi. But the mountains were beautiful.

Along the way we saw the usual goats and sheep,

and horses,

and a lone horseman in a very empty landscape.

We eventually arrive at Lake Tolbo, our destination for the day.  There were a lot of picnickers set up along the shores and a few gers in some small, scattered resorts.

The mosquitos were bad in some places.  This is us with our mosquito netting hats to help minimize the bites.  Don’t think any of us ended up bitten.  

In this area of Mongolia there are still a lot of eagle hunters.  So, in honor of this tradition there was a statue of an eagle attacking a fox.  Most interesting.

One of the rare time we were able to get a pretty good photo of a bird in flight.

Jessica and Liam also did a bit of rock climbing to get to the top of a hill for some views. 

Good views from a hill that we drove up. 

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More Lake Tolbo
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We ate dinner at the restaurant in the hotel.  The food was good but it was slow getting the food out to us. The dish with the pie crust was a horse meat dish the guide didn't order but somehow they mixed up the order and he got it anyway.