No signal. Hello freedom, hello Mongolia

MONGOLIA,

September 2018

Sadly this trip started as so many of my trips do, 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.

Nonetheless I started my trip for the first time with my new ECOTanka which is amazing if you don’t like this little plastic cups on a plane. Like how often do you spill your drink when the plane moves, well, doesn’t happen with a ECOTanka! And you now what, flight attends always have the ardent desire to fill up the whole bottle, which is amazing when you have a stopover somewhere and end up with 2 liters of water or whatever you want.

So after a 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 spent some time there. 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 is driving through this town is 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 ask me „wow you had no signal for so many days, 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.

Every second day we changed our camp location and the camp was 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.

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 faster than we could think the moment of realizing them had arrived and we wished our buddies all the beste for a free and wild winter in Mongolia who will hopefully not be too cold.