Day 1. Thurs 5th. Mongolia Here we come!

Our long awaited and much anticipated trip to Mongolia arrived and I was collected at 5.15 to drive to the long stay car park for terminal 4. We parked, caught the coach into terminal 4 and were there by 7.00. The gate didn't open till  8.00 so we decided to have breakfast in Oriel, where we met up with the others. We checked in our luggage, went through security, did a little shopping, boarded our plane and flew to Moscow. We had a 3 hour wait before our second flight to UB so we ate an ice cream!
We landed at 6.00 am (23.00), were met by Tumen and his crew, changed some money, had a drink, packed the cars and set off on the long drive to Dalanzadgad. We had several stops on the way for Demoiselle cranes with young, lots of steppe Eagles, Upland buzzards, Mongolian lark and Imperial eagles.

Fairly close to UB we stopped at a meadow for Demoiselle cranes and got our first views of Mongolian gerbil and Brandt’s vole in burrows just a few feet from the road. One stop at a small pool had a Pallas’ sandgrouse, then three more flew in. We had our first views of Bactrian camels with their floppy humps which collapse when they need to drink

Around the edge were Green/Common sand, Little-ringed plover with a Crane pair plus 1chick. We had good views of more Mongolian larks and Horned Larks.

We stopped for lunch at the Hotel Royal in Madalgove where I chose mutton stew with chips and salad. There was a bit of a wait while one car was temporarily sorted before setting off for the second half of the journey. We had a look round the town, admiring this statue of a horse that had, apparently, won the local Naadam race four times in a row.

As we got further south the terrain got drier and less birds, there were a few ravens and choughs but not much else and it was raining by the time we got to the hotel.