Day 4 - Around Base Camp

Up at 6.30 for omelette and bacon breakfast with tomatoes. Around the camp a cuckoo was heard and we saw Lammegeier, Brown and Koslov’s Accentor before driving up to the viewpoint where we sat and  scanned for a few hours before we came back down and walked across the plain area below us, with Isabelline Wheatear, Horned Lark, Asian Short-toed Lark and Snowfinches abundant.

We were picked up and dropped off about 1 km from camp to walk back seeing Snowfinch, Redstart, Daurian Shrike, Crag Martins, Pacific Swifts, Brown Accentor. There were some interesting House Leek type plants in the crevices and Hyssop growing wild

We had a lovely lunch of pasta and veg and some time-out which we took as an opportunity to have a shower now that it had been sorted out. An ingenious set up with a car battery running a pump in a bucket of water heated up on the stove. Inside the tent was a wooden slatted base to stand on and a shower unit that was extremely efficient. Care had to be taken as it was quite fierce and came out of the ‘front’ of the shower unit spraying you in the face if you weren’t ready for it. It also needed care not to soak your clothes hanging at the doorway. But it was very refreshing and pleasant after a couple of days of wipe downs with wipes.

We took a walk along the stream in the narrowing gorge. At one point there was a House Martin and Crag Martin nest with birds coming and going with food. We all found Brown Accentor and Rock Sparrow.
We had an early dinner of salad sandwiches before returning to the viewpoint, this time a little to the west. There was no cat activity but we did see Ravens, Lammergeier, and some Siberian Ibex on the tops.

We came down around 9.00pm and set off on a night drive through the gorges and valleys. Our first excitement was a family party of Marbled Polecat, an extremely rare mammal meeting. They slowly got used to us and our lights and then the family came out together and moved off up the valley, looking like a pied, rolling scarf.

We drove on, seeing a Red Fox and some Ibex. As we reached a plateau on the other side of the mountains we began to see jerboa, with the large eared Siberian Jerboa and Gobi Jerboa. A pair of wolf eyeshine were spotted but the animal moved faster than we did and disappeared. It was interesting that a flock of sheep in a nearby nomad camp were very closely packed and looked really nervous. Eventually we made it back to Base Camp around 1.20 am.