The last few days of our tour we were treated to seeing many of the birds of prey that inhabit the Gobi, and the steppes as we travelled further north. These included the Steppe Eagle, the Cinereous Vulture and Saker's Falcon. Despite being told it was rare, we saw vast numbers of the eagles in particular, which are pretty impressive in flight. Gillian was distressed to learn that their primary diet was ground squirrels, which we saw many of as they fled the oncoming car on one of the back tracks we took on our drives. They are also the only eagles that nest on the ground, albeit occasionally. James did some googling...
We also came across a group of vultures on the side of the road and stopped for the obligatory photos.
These don't do justice to these birds, which are massive and intimidating. About five minutes after getting back in the car, our driver, Tergei, discovered he was missing his phone, triggering severe PTSD from Gillian after our trip to Iceland last year. He decided that it must have dropped out of his pocket when we stopped, so we duly turned around and tried to figure out which of the identical low rises it was we stopped at for the photos. We found what we thought was the place, and as we started searched were treated to exclamations of joy as Tergei found his phone in the first 30 seconds - to the relief of all. Very lucky!
Our last activity on the tour was a stop off to visit a nomad family and have a horse ride. The ride was pretty nice, made memorable by coming across about 20 of the eagles who flew over and around us for a bit. There was a lot of rubbernecking, but thankfully no falling off. Our guide spent most of the time on his phone, so impressed with our innate riding skill that supervision was unnecessary. Tergei was so impressed he took a selfie.
This was followed by a traditional meal cooked by our host, one of the few proper Mongolian meals we had had to that point. We had dumplings and rice soup, and also managed a bit of a conversation through our guide about how livestock is farmed in Australia. Our host was happy to hear that cattle and sheep are mostly free to roam, albeit with more restrictions than on the Mongolian steppe.
Having an established relationship with the owner of the tour company, she also wanted to send back some of her airag as a gift. This is to go with the airag bought by our driver in Harhoum. And by "some", we mean we ended up with two 4.5 litre bottles of the stuff in the car. This is fermented, and non refrigerated, and it kept fermenting as we went along. Which meant that the pressure kept building in the bottles and needed to be regularly relieved. Which also didn't make for the most pleasant smelling trip home. There was even an incident when Guyen was a little slow to check on the airag and when he opened the cap there was a small explosion of fermented mare's milk in the front seat - which was gross enough to require a quick stop to clean it all up. Regular reminders issued for the rest of the trip back to Ulaanbatur.
If there is a record for the worst traffic in the world, Ulaanbatur must be close to it. Once we hit the city outskirts, the flow ground to a halt and it took forever to get to our accommodation in the city. The last 10 km took over an hour. We were relieved to get to our airbnb, which had a washing machine which was sorely needed!
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