The roadtrip now proceeded through Central Mongolia for a couple of days. Before him lay Lake Ugii (or Ögil Nuur in Mongolic language), where The Wandelgek was going to spend another night in a ger camp.

 

After arriving at the campsite he entered his ger and installed his stuff, meaning that he used the electricity plugs that were available to load all batteries of cameras, phone, etcetera.

It was more difficult to get electricity and a wifi signal now that The Wandelgek had moved furthest from the big capital of Ulaanbaatar. There was only one plug in the ger and it was only available during specific hours. It was also time for lunch and in the ger like restaurant of the campsite he had a good meal, cooked on hot black stones…

 

After lunch it was time for a bit of rest.

 

The Wandelgek was sitting on the small wooden stair in front of his ger looking around and enjoying the sunlight on his face. Again it had been a wonderfully sunny day with no wind and no rain. Suddenly The Wandelgek saw movement on the ground…or not?… when he focussed his eyes it seemed everything was motionless and quiet. But then he saw movement at another spot from the corner of his eyes and when he focussed it was gone again. What was that?

At the end of the afternoon The Wandelgek walked towards the lake. He would join some of his fellow travellers in a boatride on the lake. Purpose of the boatride would be to go birdwatching…at least that was what we were thinking…

We boarded and the Mongolian captain who was a fisherman started the motor.

The sun had started to set as we reached the center of the lake.

The water reflected the blue sky and some very thin white cloud veils, beautifully…

When we reached another boat the captain shut down his motor, took his fishing gear and handed us one fishing rod and threw out a line and hook with bait of his own. Then he sat down and started to wait… …. … and wait….. …… and wait….. until we asked what he was doing? Fishing of course he answered. Waiting for the fish to catch his bait. Then we slowly tried to explain that we were there to see birds, not to fish, but he looked at us with a vague expression in his eyes and did not seem to understand one word of what we were saying. Then we started to flap our arms like birdwings (that must have been a curious sight for the people in the other fishing boat near us ?).

In the end the only thing that worked was a telephone call to our Mongolian guide and busdriver who could explain…

Then the captain understood  but he also said that it was not a good time to go birdwatching because it was almost winter and all of the exotic birds had already left and gone south…

The boat sailed past several ger campsites that were located around the lake…

The fisherman captain had left us the fishing rod with bait ?

We did spot some birds though, like the Grebe (dutch= Fuut), Cormorant (dutch = Aalscholver), Seagulls and a Duck, but nothing really special for someone who crossed the world from The Netherlands to Mongolia to go birdwatching? Alle these birds could be seen regularly in The Netherlands too.

So that was a bit disapointing, but then the sun really started setting and nothing could have prepared me for the awe inspiring spectacle that was to come…

We now passed our own ger campsite and this pic clearly shows the gerlike building of the restaurant…

The boat now approached the long breakwater that stretched from our campsite, deep into the lake and we were going on shore or actually we were going to step from the boat on to the breakwater.

But 1st we enjoyed some awesome views from within the boat…

After saying goodbye, the fisherman left us. It was a walk over the breakwater towards shore and a bit through the grass to the ger campsite, but what an incredibly beautiful bit of a walk this would become…

The light got better and better as the sun was setting more and more…

…first the sky was ablaze…

…then the sky gradually showed all possible colors and the reflections on the lake and blue hues of the mountains were amazing to watch…

 

It was a true caleidoscoop of colors that was presented that evening…

When it was almost dark, there were only a few thin ligns of reflected light on the lake…

Slowly The Wandelgek returned towards his ger campsite…

… from where he could make some last eye popping pictures of the sunset…

…and the pastel colored sky…

Then it was time for dinner and drinks in the gerlike restaurant..

The day had ended and The Wandelgek decided to get up early next morning and see whether the sunrise would be just as magical as this sunset had been. He went to his ger, sat a while in front of the door looking up at the gorgeously bright Milky Way, before entering his ger and bed.