Gandtegchinlen Khid and the Ger camp

In the morning we took a local bus to the Gandtegchinlen Khid or Gandan temple. The temple is the largest one in Mongolia and managed to survive the communist purge in 1930s. I had read a bit about how Buddism came to Mongolia in the book Trish gave me on Tibet. It appears that the Tibetian were afraid of the Mongolian empire so in an attempt to have them on side they told Chinggis that he was a reincarnation of a holy person. The Tibetians were then included in the empire as spiritual advisers. The temple was really but after Tibet it is hard for anything to compare.

Toya then suggested that we could a horse show as we were going to miss the Naadam Festival. The horse show was around 70km out of town in the Gorkhi Terelj national park close to the Ger camps we were going to stay at. The horse show was a bit of a joke and it felt like the locals had just gotten together to make a bit of money. However I was still happy cos I got to see The archery, wrestling and some horse acrobatics. There was also a throat singer, who made the weirdest noises I have ever heard.

The throat singer

horse archery
archery

Me being Mongolian!
Mongolian wrestlingThe winner

After the show we went to our Ger Camp. I was really excited to be staying in the camp and was glad it wasn't really touristy. It was about 300m over a hill from the tourist camp so we were alone but close to really toilets and the restaurant. Jenny and I got a Ger to ourselves.
Dan, Chris, Dean and I hiked up the near by hills. Some of the climb was really hard and Daniel is like a mountain goat and left the rest of us in his dust.

While hiking the boys managed to scare the hell out of me by talking about bears and wolfs which are often in the area. I kept hearing things are was convinced it was a bear. I had no idea what I would do if i saw a bear or what you were meant to do. Everyone talks about how dangerous Australia is but I would rather a deadly spider over a bear any day. Naturally we didn't see any and made it back to the gers alive. After dinner we played a few drinks games one of the gers.