Steppe by Steppe

Day 470 My alarm went off early, but I was already awake. Most of the other people in the room had been up earlier and woke me in the process. I packed my bagsadn checked a few of them. It really annoyed me that I had to pay to keep my bags at the hostel overnight. I already paid them for a tour, why should I have to pay more?

After a breakfast that consisted of bread and jam I joined Canadians Emily, Ben and Greg as well as SwissDomenic in the van. We made a quick stop at a supermarket to pick up some food and some beer for the evening. It was really a pity that the driver wouldn't stop for us to take pictures along the way. The scenery was really quite stunning. It wasn't long before we had arrived at our yert camp.

Our hosts told us that lunch was in 2 hours so we decided to take a short hike. I was so much slower than everyone. They kept having to wait for me and I was getting annoyed at being alone all of the time. I wasn't just moving slowly because I'm out of shape, I am, but because I really don't want to reinjure my foot, that would suck. In the end I decided to just turn around and head back. On the way I passed a group of horses being herded. It was pretty cool. I spent the next hour or so reading before lunch came.

Lunch was really gross and I could hardly get it down. Dominic ended up eating most of mine. After lunch everyone seemed to take a nap and then a couple people went on a hike. I decided to stay with my book until it was time to get on the horse.

Around six the horses were saddled. I had a Mongolian horse named Har . Despite her small size I still had problems getting on and tried to ask if there was something that I could stand on. Our guide said no and I don't know how I got up. The guide then used a table to climb on his horse. That just wasn't fair. My horse liked to be near all of the other horses, so near that she was touching them. Har would constantly wedge her way between two horses, even when there wasn't any real space. This meant that my knees were almost going up the small horses butts. At one point Har was so close when one of the other horses peeed that some got on my pant leg. Despite Har's strange personality the ride was really very nice, the scenery was amazing. I was happy though when the two hours were up, I was definitely aching! When we came back dinner was ready to go, it was just as gross as before and I couldn't eat it. Dominic ate mine again.

We then played some card games and drank some beer in our yert. At one point I came out to use the outhouse and was stunned to see that one of our hosts was in the women's room with the door open and going to the bathroom very loudly. I peed behind the yert instead. We all went to bed early, there just wasn't much to do.