Arrival to Orkhon Waterfall Ger camp and crazy Ogra

8 July

Day 225: Central Mongolia

Today we first drove to the Tovkhon monastery, or let’s say to the National park. The monastery was on the top of the mountain, and we had to hike around 1 hour up to see it. Juli has decided to stay with Ogna, and have a nap while she was cooking lunch and 5 of us (Marketa, Kati, Milana, Nir and me) went to the forest to see the Monastery.

Ogna gave us the entrance tickets (she paid 3,000 togrog for us when we entered the National park and the woman told her it is valid for the entrance into the Monastery).

These guys were waiting for someone to rent a horse, but we decided to walk.

Before we went to the forest, driver took out Nir’s bag from the car (probably to look for something in the car). Besides the fact that somehow driver broke the wheel of Nir’s trolley bag, this bag on the grass gave us a leitmotiv for the whole Monastery excursion – it was Nir’s leaving party (since the bags were already out).

It is difficult to describe, but I don’t remember when I laughed so much for the last time, as we did it during this hike. We took 2litres of vodka mixed with Fanta with us and laughed the whole way, in spite of a really heavy rain that caught us on the way.

But the best part was waiting for us. When we arrived to the Monastery, a man at the entrance told us that our ticket was not valid and we needed to buy the entrance ticket for 2,500 togrog (around 1,5 euros). Since we were pretty “happy” due to the vodka, Marketa decided to take the man and she run towards Monastery gate pushing the man with her body and treating him with her fists. I think the man got scared (she was taller and pretty angry) and decided to fight with Kati.

Kati started to shout at him in Hungarian (bozmeg bozmeg I could anderstand) and in the end she somehow slipped away and fell down the hill, rolling 2 times over her head. It was like a slow motion falling movie, gathering all the mud and wet grass on the way :D

Anyway, nothing else happened, we bought the tickets, walked around Monastery and went back to Ogna. Kati wanted to kill Ogna for not telling the truth (that we needed another ticket), but Ogna did not know that herself and was really surprised that Kati blamed her for that :D

Finally we went towards to the waterfall ger camp and the surroundings were incredible!!!

On the way we stopped to see a local Naadam in some village (wrestling and horse riding competition).We continued our way and were having lots of fun, mixing vodka with fanta in the car and laughing,

when in the middle of the way Ogna turns around and tells that she is counting days and hours till Ulaanbaatar to finally get rid of us. We start to argue and shout again, including insulting each other. Finally we arrive to the Ger camp, she gets out of the car, leaves us alone and the driver takes us to two gers in the middle of nowhere. One Ger has 4 beds and another one is actually a Ger of Mongolian family. We don’t know anything, Ogna is gone, we don’t have any food and have no idea where we are sleeping. Horror movie :D

In the end driver takes us to another Gers, we speak with a guide of another group about the problem and he goes to speak to Ogna, while we go to buy some food in a only one shop in this camp.

When we are back from the shop, Ogna is in the car. They take us to a normal Ger, with 6 beds, where we can sleep, we have our dinner (with the food we bought) and finally go to sleep.

What a crazy day!! Crazy Ogna (or Ogra how we used to call her, because she was like Ogr to us, you know Shrek kind :D