On the Road Again - Adventures from an Empty Nest

We've found the Gobi you see in movies! With a week of rain, much of the Gobi is in flower, green from horizon to horizon. Today, though, we came to the Seruun Bulag sand dunes—100km X 12km of soft, fine, blowing sand. Our group, minus four of us who went part way up and then watched, climbed to the top of one of the highest dunes and back down. Some Korean tourists after us hiked up with red plastic sleds, but they stayed at the top for dinner or snacks, so we didn't get to see them slide down.  While I was watching the climbers from a lower dune, a group of horses trotted out onto the sand and started rolling on their backs in evident delight. I'm sure it helps clean their fur and relieve the nuisance of flies.  We've spent a LOT of time in our vehicles the last several days. First we drove several hours, much of the time on non-road trails across rocky ground to Karakorum. We spent two nights there at the Tenger Blue Sky ger camp. The first morning, after viewing the

(Pictures below, if you're impatient) Mongolia is, as you might imagine, like nothing we've seen before. We spent two days in the city of Ulaanbaatar, visiting museums and exploring the downtown area. The highlight for me of those first two days was a visit to a school of traditional music, where a very talented young throat singer demonstrated his singing and playing the horsehead fiddle for us. After the performance, he gave me a lesson in throat singing, and I was able to achieve the first stage! It sounds harsh, but really feels open and easy when you get it. On the way out of the school, we met two little girls who had arrived for their Mongolian harp lesson. They gave us an impromptu concert in the lobby. One turned out to be from Ireland; her parents send her back to her grandparents in Mongolia every summer to learn her culture.  On the third day, we headed out into the countryside in six four-wheel-drive trucks to begin our 2,500km odyssey. After a stop at the ger (yur

This year's anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Charlottesville passed almost without note in our house, quite a difference from the last seven years. It's not that we didn't remember, but we were, wellm distracted. I had a major deadline for a work project—the 25-page draft was due yesterday. Meanwhile, we were making lists and using up leftovers and cleaning and—PACKING! Today, we are off to Mongolia, to revel in throat singing and camel riding and starry desert nights. Mongolia was never really on our bucket list, though I have always said I'll go anywhere if I have the opportunity. Road Scholar, a nonprofit educational tour company for elders, started sending us their catalog when Joe turned 65. We always read it with interest, fantasizing about the amazing places they go. And then, late last year, the catalog announced "Special Price–Free Airfare" on a trip to Mongolia. I've never been able to pass up a great deal, and it made the trip almost affordab