Winter in Terelj

Hello again

As promised, here are some pictures of Mongolia in winter.

The temperature is now usually at around -20°, goes up to a maximum of -10°C and down to -30°C. Actually it is not that bad as it sound and I’m already pretty much used to it. If it’s too cold you just put on another layer of clothes. Worse than the temperature is the air quality. As you might have noticed, I have embedded the actual air quality index at the right hand side of this blog, where you can see how strong the pollution is at the moment. For us it's kind of funny and sad at the same time that in the media there was a strong focus on Beijing in the last weeks, because of their smog levels. Usually the pollution here is much higher, but who wants to talk about Ulaanbaatar? More about the incredible smog in UB will be covered in one of the next posts.
Today I would like to show some nice pictures of snowy Mongolia. Compared to last years, there is a lot of snow right now and the countryside is completely covered in white. But have a look yourself, here are pictures of the close by national park called Terelj which I have taken last week, when I went there with the colleagues from my project to conduct a workshop.

 

This was the location of our lodge

...with some pretty cottages and a little mountain which I climbed during the day.

Sunrise at the next morning

Temperature difference from inside to outside: 47,4°C

The great IMRI team!

Thats the view from the mountain I climbed up.

panorama view from the top

Sledging was fun as well

:-)

This is one of the many, many Ovoos, that you find everywhere in Mongolia.

I think I don't have to emphasize that there is quite a difference to the pictures I have taken 6 weeks ago :-)
I hope you enjoyed it and I wish you all very nice Christmas Days and a Happy New Year.

Malte

Gobi climbing

Hey all

In contrast to Germany, the Mongolian winter definitely started in November already, when there were up to -36°C in the morning hours. Unfortunately I didn’t find the time to write an article for some time, so now I try to catch up before having winter holidays, which will start for me on next Tuesday.

 

Yes, thats cold!

This post is about the last “warm” days, when it was +10°C during the daytime. It seemed to me like yesterday that we went for a climbing trip to Gobi, but now it’s already 7 weeks ago. I see it as a good sign that I don’t have too much time to write, because I don't have so many boring days where I don't have anything to do. But I apologize for letting you wait that long and I will give my best to write more regularly from now on. So the following pictures were already taken on the last weekend of October. 

This is the spot, where we went climbing, roughly 400 km south of Ulaanbaatar.

And this is how we came there

Our comfortable sleeping place. And yes there was already snow.

A dream for geologists and climbers: Spheroidally weathered granite rock

Beautiful landscape

But we were not alone....

...we were regularly visited by herds of sheep, goats...

...herded by a sheppard on a motorcycle.

And of course we did some climbing

In the evening I climbed the highest point to get a good view for the sunset...

...looking to the west...

...and looking to the east.

As it was Halloween that weekend, a pumpkin could not be missing.

The clear desert night was perfect to get stunned by an incredible sky full of stars.

There were falling stars every few minutes and I've never seen the milky way that clearly. 

On the next morning, we continued climbing as soon as the rocks and our hands warmed up again.

Trying to climb up that chimney

We were having several spectators, some looked bored...

...some looked very sharply what we did.

Anyone has an idea, what kind of eagle this is? It was quite big with a wing span of maybe up to 3 m...

And one spectator had to wait too looong time to see us climb.

That was Mongolia in autumn. Next time I will show you how it looks like these day!

All the best
Malte