Nomad Steppes

One of the ger camps, the Nomad Steppes camp, was located in a small protected area of Mongolia. Mongolia has set aside many different places to preserve the natural flora and fauna, restricting use of the area to save it from being loved to death. This particular area was centered around a very shallow but long, narrow river. We spent one day rafting down the river. Initially we thought we were crazy; the wind was blowing, cold and bitter, the water was freezing, the raft was hard to inflate, the wind caught everything and tried to take it down the river ahead of us. For some reason we persevered and finally set out down the river. Amazingly, once we set out, the wind died, the day warmed up and we had a delightful time. It was a slow and easy ride and shallow enough that when we got in trouble, all it required was stepping out of the raft to move it back out of the shallows and into the stream.
We also had a chance here to ride the Mongolian horses through the meadow and into the bird sanctuary. Both Jeff and Brad tried to capture pictures of the birds that nested there but they were watchful of people and tended to fly off before anyone got very close. Jeff did manage to get some good shots of a swan family but only because they had young babies who couldn’t fly. We also got a good shot of a herd of goats, though they were faster than we were.