No signal. Hello freedom, hello Mongolia

MONGOLIA,

September 2018

Sadly this trip started as so many of my trips do, with sitting in a plane. It’s not just the thing that flying is one of the ultimate MCAs of ecological destruction in our time, but that every time I have to enter one of this machines I say goodbye to my life .. honestly I truly hate flying.

So after many hours in planes and foreign airports, where I tried to distract myself with movies and my phone, I finally arrived in Mongolia. And there it happened, I looked out of the little plane window and for the first time I already liked a country before I even stepped a foot in it. Why? Because what I saw when I looked out this window weren’t big cities and industries but a lot of nature. Nature and horse.

Ulan Bator

After my arrival I was picked up by a driver of the company and brought to my hotel, in the capital of Mongolia, to meet my friend Patty and the third girl of our group „Caro“. As nice as the name Ulan Bator is for this little town, I would prefer „the town of Toyota Prius“.

Every third car which was driving through this town was a Toyota Prius or an other hybrid car.

Population of Mongolia: 3 Mio.

And then the real adventure began

The next day we started our trip into the Tundra of Mongolia where we met our partners in Crime „Schattenfell“, „Timmy Trumpet“ and „Puschl“.

The next days were dominated by riding, enjoying the endless nature of Mongolia, sleeping in yurts, looking for wild animals and

having no signal.

Many people asked me „wow you had no signal for so many days, that must have been the worse for you“ and my answer was „it was a dream“. Having no signal, having no possibility to be online was the best holiday I had in a while. I didn’t have the urge to work on „travelling_vet“ or text with people I didn’t wanna text to, to tell them how amazing Mongolia is, I just spent my free time with talking, reading books and watching for mice.

Spending your days with Mongolian Horses, trusting them, counting on them, reminded me of handling foals, because the thing is, Mongolian Horses are quite wild. And first of all they are ponies, they are quite small, not what you would expect when you hear the old stories of Genghis Khan, fighting with his war horse. Still ponies who are very robust and can kick quite hard. As with foals you can never fully trust them, you have to watch their hind legs and they are quite easily startled, but so lovely.

I think pictures describe more of this beauty, of the calmness of this country, the nature, the animals, than words ever could.

One thing that really bothered me was that the horses were only given water once or twice a day. And during the day they were all tied together so they would run away and at night they would tie their legs together so they couldn’t run to far.

Trying to attract some mices

Every second day we changed our camp location and the camp utensils were brought to an other place in the wildness, carried by the camels which stayed at the camp.

Which reminds me that one day I really wanna be a camel owner.

the snake field

One very scary day was the day we crossed a field with a lot of snakes. I was very happy to be sitting on a horse, well I would have been even more happy if it would have been a taller horse, giving my legs a bigger distance to the snakes. But they were more afraid of us then we were of them and just tried to get a away when they saw us.

During this trip I also had the opportunity to write „Donate a Postcard“ postcards to people who donated money for my welfare work! It’s such an amazing thing when people start to care about others and support you to do it!

At the end of our trip we left gifts for our group and I left almost all my clothes.

But before we said goodbye we visited a part of the amazing desert of Mongolia and had the amazing luck to see a wolf! Who disappeared as fast as he could when he saw us.

The end

Before we returned our horses to the guides we visited some nomads who invited us into their yurts, where they sat with their families and watched TV with a satellite dish. It was a simple life but still they seemed to have everything they needed in this one room yurt, a kitchen, a living room, beds, toys for the kids. And on the way back we were bringing a herd of ponies back to the camp which was one of the craziest but also most exciting things I had done so far. Riding between wild ponies, somewhere in Mongolia.

And way too fast the trip was over and we wished our buddies all the best for a free and wild winter in Mongolia which would hopefully not be too cold.