Ganbaatar, Our Hero
Ganbaatar's name means ";Iron Hero" in Mongolian, and he was certainly a hero to us. We hooked up via Ms. Cathy Kmita, my saskatoon video artist friend who had spent an eventful time living in Ulaanbaatar (which, by the way means Red Hero - a great name for a capital city, say I)
We wanted to book him for a guided tour of the Gobi all to ourselves but as he was already spoken for, we decided to squeeze in with his two budget conscious American customers. And very glad we are that we did so, too.
There are a million and one tours out to the Gobi for dusty travellers rocketing through on the Trans-Mongolian Russia - Beijing train that need to tick that 'I Visited the Gobi in Mongolia' box.
From what we saw and heard though, they were pretty hit-and-miss. On our trip out, Ganbaatar more than once had to stop and give a bemused looking city boy guide directions back to civilization, and that would be a very, very sobering thing to have happen. Stories of 'guides' that could say Hello! in english, or drivers that didn't have spare tyres or enough water were enough to my curl my hair. We went through 3 tyres in a week - there are not roads in any sense of the world out there in the countryside.
Having been a full-time hunter in the area for 35 years, and being famous enough to take the President of Mongolia out hunting and fishing, man, were we all confident with Our Hero around.
He'd drive all day, take us to crazy little spots he had discovered himself - Neolithic pictographs, prehistoric tombs, etc - show us all the wildlife you could name or imagine, regale us with stories and legends, find an amazing camping spot and then set it all up for us. I pretty much had to insist that we share the cooking and dishes otherwise he would never have had any rest at all
He knew the locals well enough to just roll up and ask for water to top up our supplies. Or just for a visit. The Mongolians don't just drive up, chat and leave. No, we go in and get seated and we share tea and goodies. Then we chat and trade stories and then we leave. It was so sweet.
Oh, and did we ever see a lot of wild stuff. Every single moment there was different land, different animals and birds. It was really incredible. And Troy and Terry, all the way from Atlanta Georgia were fantastic travelling companions.
Did I mention Ganbaatar is also a photographer? This was an extra special bonus for us tourists, because he had no problem stopping for photos and would often have his Canon out first!
We salute you.
