In order to complete the Mongolia series, we are reposting Monika’s Birthday blog. Only she can get away with celebrating two birthdays in one year! What’s a birthday? Just another number on the calendar right? Not for Monika! Her birthdays are special and can last for days, depending on what she dreams up each year. […]
It was 23°F outside under a blazing blue sky as the second day of the 16th Annual Golden Eagle Festival began. Different from the previous day’s event where eagles had to attack a dead rabbit or fox being drug behind their trainer’s horse, today they had to zero in on their owner who held a chunk […]
After a harrowing 5-day/900-mile, (1,500 kilometers), drive across the amazing expanses of the northern Gobi Desert, (see previous blog), we arrived at the site of the 16th Annual Golden Eagle Festival just outside of Bayan-Olgii in Western Mongolia, and parked to join the growing crowd of spectators. Some of you may recall that when we crossed […]
In the morning we gently headed out. The rear suspension seemed to be doing fine without the help of the air bags. Turning back to Ulaanbaatar was not an option. We already knew how bad that road was. We could only hope it would get better. It didn’t! We were not lost. We just didn’t […]
Getting directions out of the sprawling city of Ulaanbaatar was a bit of a challenge at 6:00 AM. We did have a tourist map, but of course, it was not in English. We had no GPS chip for Mongolia, but knowing our destination was west, as long as we had the sun to our backs […]
HAPPY NEW YEAR Life is an Adventure The Essence of Adventure is not knowing how it’s going to come out. Live your dreams and have a great and healthy 2019. Best Wishes Gary and Monika
Mongolia!! The name of this landlocked Asian country has a magical ring to it. We could not think of Mongolia without our minds drifting on the image of the legendary Genghis Khan. Born in the 1160s, he spent his early life assembling a dedicated army of nomads from the immense grasslands of the Gobi, at […]
Many of you may recall back in Tajikistan Blog #8, we had met this amazing young girl. If not or if so, here is an update on the Magic Girl of the Pamirs. It was another spectacular warm sunny day in the mountains of Tajikistan,— as warm as it gets at 14,000 feet. The intense blue […]
During the night the temperature had dropped to 37°F but Green slept well in the down sleeping bag we had provided for her, spread on top of two thick Cascade Design Therm-A-Rest sleeping pads. Morning dawned; another beautiful day, perhaps our last in China. Knowing the bureaucratic paperwork that waited for us at the border, it […]
Happy Thanksgiving To all our US Friends and Family around the World Gratitude Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, A stranger […]
