Rygsækrejsen 2015-2016: Orkhon waterfall walk and Nadaam festival

This morning was beautiful. Blue sky and enjoying a nice breakfast before doing a short walk to the waterfall. Not like being at Iguasu but just a nice 20 meter high waterfall. Walked around it for a while before Mikkel headed back to the truck. Malene walked a bit up the river and enjoyed the yaks, horses and herdsmen trying to get the animals across the river. Her favourite spot so far in Mongolia.

We left for the next camp at around 11 but just before the lunch stop we came across the local festival – Nadaam. In the middle of nowhere – next to the river we stumbled across a combined market and horse riding festival. So we decided to have our lunch there giving us time to have a look at the market and the people there.

Nadaam goes on for a couple of days, of course with Ulaanbaatar being the biggest festival place but it also takes place in many small villages. The competitions are wrestling, archery and horse race. With some good money prices. We were all eager to see some of Nadaam but it's not easy to plan were to go and see the competitions - other than in UB, where we weren't at that time - because they don't really plan it until the very last day. But somehow all the Mongolians figure out where it is and show up - with horses, bow and arrows and so on on the right place and time.

It was a hot afternoon so Malene and some of the others decided to head for the river for a swim before heading for our camp. First attempt was to try to camp next to the entrance to the temple walk. No success – so we had to head back to the nearest slope where the truck managed to make it up. Nice view over the valley and lots of space to set up tents.

When the dinner was ready we were surprised by a herd of goats. Not 10 or 20 – closer to 100 walking through our camp doing their evening walk - and paying particular interest to our food pit with food sracps and everything else they could chew on including our tents. So some of us had to take a short break from dinner and shout at the animals so they didn't chew our tents too much.

The rest of the evening was just enjoying the wonderful spot we had found doing marsh mellows in the camp fire.