Sittin' on the Porch in the Gobi

(At Three Camel Lodge, the Gobi. Photo by Haydock.)

After moving camp every day for a couple of weeks, it felt great to settle down for five days at the Three Camel Lodge in the eastern Gobi. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, a big wooden lodge with white gers (yurts) clustered around it. It’s an “eco-lodge.” They heat the water and run the lights with solar power. Their website at threecamellodge.com tells all about it.

I had caught a cold, so I spent a couple of days sitting on the big porch of the big main lodge, watching the scenery change. The lodge backs up on a low hill that shelters it from the wind. In front, the flat land runs several miles out to low mountains, the eastern tip of the Altai mountain range. The mountains changed continually with the weather. They went from looking like huge, tall mountains to little tiny ones, and from dark, threatening precipices to pale, bare slopes.

A few hundred yards out in front of the porch, there’s a well with a watering trough. All day long, the various animal herds cross by in front of the lodge on their way for water. The goats and sheep meander over there a couple times a day with their lambs and kids. The horse herds go by, usually at a trot or canter, with the foals scrambling to stay close to their moms, and the stallion keeping everyone moving. The Gobi’s sort of a pale green now, and the rainy season starts in late July, so it’ll stay green for a while.

While we were there it was unusually rainy. You could see the big thunderheads moving across the desert miles away, with long skirts of rain trailing below them. I saw some of the most amazing lightning ever. Sadly, some of the guests got pretty bent out of shape when there were no hot showers because of the cloudy weather. They seemed a little unclear on the concept of an eco-lodge….