Mongolia #7 – Visas and Suspension – October 2014

February 8, 2019

With the excitement of the Golden Eagle Festival over, we were quickly brought back to reality and the fact that The Turtle V had a serious suspension problem. The good news was that repair parts from Hellwig Products in Visalia, CA were waiting to be sent. The bad news was that there was nothing remotely like […]

Mongolia #6 -Monika’s Birthday in Olgii – October 2014

February 1, 2019

In order to complete the Mongolia series, we are reposting Monika’s Birthday blog. Only she can get away with celebrating two birthdays in one year! What’s a birthday? Just another number on the calendar right? Not for Monika! Her birthdays are special and can last for days, depending on what she dreams up each year. […]

Mongolia #5 – Olgii’s Golden Eagle Festival – Day 2 – October 2014

January 25, 2019

It was 23°F outside under a blazing blue sky as the second day of the 16th Annual Golden Eagle Festival began. Different from the previous day’s event where eagles had to attack a dead rabbit or fox being drug behind their trainer’s horse, today they had to zero in on their owner who held a chunk […]

Mongolia #4 – Olgii’s Golden Eagle Festival – Day 1 – October 2014

January 18, 2019

After a harrowing 5-day/900-mile, (1,500 kilometers), drive across the amazing expanses of the northern Gobi Desert, (see previous blog), we arrived at the site of the 16th Annual Golden Eagle Festival just outside of Bayan-Olgii in Western Mongolia, and parked to join the growing crowd of spectators. Some of you may recall that when we crossed […]

Mongolia # 3 – Heading west to Olgii – October 2014

January 11, 2019

In the morning we gently headed out. The rear suspension seemed to be doing fine without the help of the air bags. Turning back to Ulaanbaatar was not an option. We already knew how bad that road was. We could only hope it would get better. It didn’t! We were not lost. We just didn’t […]

Mongolia # 2 – Heading west on the Main Highway – October 2014

January 4, 2019

Getting directions out of the sprawling city of Ulaanbaatar was a bit of a challenge at 6:00 AM. We did have a tourist map, but of course, it was not in English. We had no GPS chip for Mongolia, but knowing our destination was west, as long as we had the sun to our backs […]

Mongolia # 1 – Land of Genghis Khan – October 2014

December 15, 2018

Mongolia!! The name of this landlocked Asian country has a magical ring to it. We could not think of Mongolia without our minds drifting on the image of the legendary Genghis Khan. Born in the 1160s, he spent his early life assembling a dedicated army of nomads from the immense grasslands of the Gobi, at […]