Mongolian Tour: Terkhiin Tsagaan (The White Lake)

...As Kat has already mentioned, the beautiful reality of our roadtrip across Central Mongolia was that we could see the landscape changing each day as we drove.

One of the places where this was most evident was around Terkhiin Tsagaan, or The White Lake.  

White Lake "Terkhiin Tsagaan"

The lake was formed from the eruption of a nearby volcano called "Khorgo", the crater of which you can (and I did) comfortably walk around in about 30 minutes. 

Rob on the far side of Khorgo

Standing on top of it feels a bit like being at the top of Rod Laver Arena, except a Rod Laver at 3000m above sea level that had the tennis court removed and replaced with a very steep slippery slide of loose basalt rocks.

Kat watching the tennis

The lake itself is beautiful and the weather for us was just perfect.  There were clouds bouncing off the lake, boys building their summer ger camp, with yaks and horses grazing on the lush pasture and hills surrounding our roasty warm ger. 

Yak party

Mongolian take on a horse float

Kat and I enjoyed some quiet time walking along the lakes edge to one of the many vantage points where we could look at the lake and the tourist camps, but also where we could watch the horse mobs making their own way with no human control to some pre-determined destination.  While on the road, through the book I was reading ("Guns, Germs and Steel"), I had just learned about the hierarchy that apparently exists amongst horses.  Generally led by a stallion, Mare A will have her foals following her and always be followed by Mare B and her foals etc. So, because I've never been around horses enough to learn this, I had to go on a fact checking mission before writing this down, according to this reference it's TRUE!

Krueger, K., Flauger, B., Farmer, K., & Hemelrijk, C. (2014). Movement initiation in groups of feral horses. Behavioural Process., 103, 91–101. viewed January 9, 20144, http://www.rug.nl/research/behavioural-ecology-and-self-organization/_pdf/kr_ea_bp14.pdf

Horse hierarchies

It was amazing to actually see this in action only hours after reading about it.

We also had the opportunity to visit a local family who run a herd of yak.  From their camp they make all kinds of dairy products: milk, butter, yoghurt and curd all from their own yaks. The yoghurt was good but I could not get enough of the the butter - absolutely devine!  I must have done a good job on complimenting the yoghourt as Bimba was still trying to feed it to me 4 days afterward, when it was starting to get a bit funny (with no refrigeration).

MMMM yak butter and bread

The day was polished off in style with Batar and Bimba preparing a hot rock BBQ.  Meat is cooked by super heating rocks and laying the meat on top of them with some cabbages and vegetables on top to hold the heat in.  Just don't accidentally eat a rock!

"Batar Special" Mongolian Hot Rock BBQ!

My one wish for this part of the trip was that the water in the lake wasn't so cold, we could have had some lovely swims!

Afternoon lake views