Day 3 in central mongolia

So we have a long day ahead of us. 300km drive but on pavement so a nice smooth ride. We stop at couple of monuments along the way for stretches. We get word of another small local Naadam. It is a sheep ankles tourny. We pop in to see some of the action. It is hot of course and dusty. The only game in this tourny is sheep ankles. We are the only foreigners this time and people are interested in us. One mongolian guy came right up to us and in pretty good french started asking us where we were from. Turns out he lived in France for 2 years and was itching to use his french. Well mine is almost useless but our travel mate Blake has some. So between the three of us we managed. Everyone wanted pictures with us and we wanted pics too. Then it was time to leave. We bought some lunch of fried meat dumplings and left to have a picnic.

We are driving to Kharkorum. It is called the acient city. There is a huge ruin site here. Ghengis Khan built this city to be the capital city of Mongolia. Here is a large monastary now. But you can still see the outline of where the original capital city stood. We have to wait til we get to the museum in Ulaan Bataar to see what the old city looked like. They are suppose to have a model of it. There is talk of moving the capital city back to here for 10years to commemorate the 250th anniversary. Not sure how they think thet are going to move a capital city to a place that has dial up and no major roads. Well if anyone can these people will figure out a way. We will have to wait a few years to see.

We drove up to a lookout . It is a huge monument to honor the acient city. It has amazing views of the Orkon Valley.

In the morning we go for a horse back ride. Ann opps out but Blake wants to ride so \i go to keep him company. But this ride is different. They want to lead our horses. So Blake who is quite an experienced rider is feeling like a 6year old at a pony ride. I have also ridden and felt capable of controlling my own horse. But they didn't understand us and there we went at a snails pace.

Our driver this morning was looking rough. I first thought he must have had some vodka with the other drivers last night and \i ask Bobo our guide if he is hungover. She said "no, he is sore" I guess he lost his favorite knife that is on his keychain while working on the van. It was dark and while he was looking around for it he fell down into a gulley and fell back and banged his head pretty hard. I think he had whiplash. Then while having lunch that day he said he couldn't find his cell phone. We felt so bad for him. He looked like his puppy had died. Ann gave him her multi tool and \i put it on one of my extra caribiners so he could hook it to his belt. He was so happy. Amazing what something small to us can do to cheer someone up. It turns out the knife he lost was a gift from his sister when she visited the states. So this knife being from canada (via China) was almost as good.