"Chuh-Chuh - wooooaaaaaa!"

After yesterday's dark-ish blip (apologies if I scared anyone), I thought I'd go with something different today.

Sorting some stuff out, I found these Mongolian cards. As some of you already know, in Sept 2009, I travelled from Moscow to Beijing by train, crossing Mongolia (and its seemingly endless Gobi desert) on the way.

I chose to travel solo, rather than as part of a group, to allow more freedom. I did have some support though, from the company who I'd used to book accommodation and tickets for me - this support was usually in the form of a series of drivers, all with a battered Russian car and a love of driving fast, plus on occasion, a guide for part of the time, whilst I was off the train.

A highlight for me was Mongolia - getting out onto the steppes had been a dream of mine for years and I spent a few (too few) days at a ger camp, where I visited nomads, drank fermented mare's milk and Mongolian "tea" and ate fizzy yoghurt and strange cheese. I drank vodka, tried archery, met some lovely people and didn't want to leave.

Myself and the other tourists staying at the camp rode horses one day (another dream of mine) which was simultaneously the most exhilarating and the most terrifying thing I've done (in terms of scariness, the Russian/Mongolian border crossing - all 9 hours of it - was a tough one to beat). The horses aren't tame - not even the "tourist" ones and I'm very much a novice rider, so when the herdsmen got the horses to gallop I adopted the "cling on for dear life and don't think about how far from civilization you are if you fall off" approach. Which worked :-)

Anyhoo - on that 3 week trip, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and embraced life. I was scared at times, lonely on occasion and perfectly, blissfully happy at others (I was also slightly befuddled on vodka a couple of times, but that's a story for another time ;-)

I feel recently like I've lost that part of me, and my reason for posting this today as my blip is to serve as a reminder to myself to get out there....