Ger Camp and horse riding

The next day I felt average after drinking too much the night before and spent the morning writing postcards and talking to Jenny about life in London and what to see there. Just before lunch Jenny, peter and I climbed up another one of the hills near by. The views were amazing. The landscape was similar to home and the weather equally as hot.


In the afternoon we went for a horse ride to a local Nomadic family to hear about their lives. I was given the big horse while everyone easy was given the small Mongolian native horses.


We were not given any helmet and I was a bit concerned about falling off. Our horse riding guide also did not speak any English which added to the fear. In the first few minutes of the ride my horse took off towards the main road. I tried to pull back on the reigns like you normally do to stop a horse but this only made the horse speed up. I was a little freaked out and now of the guides seemed to care when I yelled out for help. Finally I got the horse to stop just before the road. The rest of the ride was fine though he did try to speed up a few times again.

The ride was great fun and it was a wonderful way to see Mongolia. After around 30 mins we reached the nomadic family and got off our horse and went inside. Toya was there to help translate all of our questions to the family and to help us follow the correct etiquette in the ger. We entered the ger and had to walk in a clockwise direction. The ger belonged to a woman and her husband. They lived their with their youngest son who was still not married. Because it was school holidays the family´s grandchildren were visiting. This meant there was around 9 children also sleeping in the ger.


The ger was similar to the ones we stayed in but instead of western beds they had small traditional Mongolian beds. We ate some traditional food which the family had prepared which consisted of yoghurt, cheese, milk tea and biscuits with butter. I really liked the tea and the yoghurt. We asked the woman as many questions as we could think of. I wished I had thought of a few more during the horse ride.

We learnt that Nomadic families spend most of their time just with their families and meet up with other nomadic tribes at naadam festival. They farm all their own food and occasionally ride into town to barter for supply that they can not create themselves. The family moves four times a year and has a regular camp site at each location. They owned the camp site that they stayed at in summer. Toya told me that land ownership had only been introduced to Mongolia in the past 3 years.

After a lovely chat to the Nomadic woman we rode back to camp. I took a different horse because Peterś horse was really small and he looked like he could touch the ground while riding it. His horse was really slow so I made my way home a few km behind the pack. Peter on the other hand had a few issues with my horse and was lead by one of the guides all the way back to camp.

Me on the smaller Mongolian horse

Back at camp no one was up for drink games again so we had hot chocolate in Jenny and my ger with roasted marshmallows over our little pot belly stove.