Photos From My Trip to Asia: July 2006

This summer I went to Asia for a month with a friend I met while studying abroad in Ghana back in 2002. We hung out in Beijing for a week, taking in all the tourist sites, which were awe-inspiring. We then flew to Ulaanbataar, Mongolia to catch the annual Naadam festival, which includes wrestling (in tiny jackets, briefs and boots, as we found out), archery and horse races. I enjoyed the capital city but was itching to see the countryside, which is why a westerner goes to Mongolia in the first place. We set off for 18 days in a Russian-built van with an Italian couple, a translator/guide, and what we soon found out was the best driver on the entire planet. We stayed in gers, tents, and spent one night in a room in a museum in the middle of the Gobi desert. In my three weeks there, I found Mongolia to be a country of horses, dogs, yaks, friendly people, and vast expanses of steppe, desert, rolling hills, and alpine-like forests. I rode some ornery horses, ate fried mutton, and played a game of luck which involved rolling giant handfuls of sheep vertebrae. It was a blast.

From China:








From Mongolia: