Welcome to Botswana! Holy crap time flies! It seems like I barely had time to catch my breath after the last trip and suddenly, I’m on another adventure. I’ll start off by saying that Botswana was not easy to get to, at least not from the USA. My trip started in Salt Lake City with a flight to Newark, and then a Holy Crap Adventures first, an airport change. From Newark I took a shuttle for a very circuitous tour…
My flight back to Ulaanbaatar from Ulgii was, thankfully, uneventful. I spent one day getting myself in order, getting my trusty LandCruiser back (they gave me the same car again, but a different tent), getting supplies at the State Dept Store, and I was off again. This time I’m headed south to the Gobi Desert. I planned this for last thinking the weather would be warmer while the rest of Mongolia started to freeze. My first stop isn’t really that…
Ok, so the last couple of weeks have been unbelievably bonkers! There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s just dive right in. The first few days were actually quite nice. After trying to recover from my wicked case of the flu in Ulaanbataar for a few days, I boarded a domestic flight for Ulgii, way out in western Mongolia. This area had traditionally been where Kazakh nomads grazed their herds in summer, but when new borders were drawn in…
After finishing up in the Khogno Khan Uul area, I continued on to Kharkhorin. I made a quick detour to visit the Shankh Monastery, first, though. This is one of two monasteries in this area that were spared the Stalinist purges. It was founded by Mongolias first Buddhist leader, Zanabazar in 1648. There’s really not much going on inside the temples. They appear to be decorating or redecorating, but it was nice to walk into a dusty old wooden monastery…
From Ikh Gazriin Chuluu I drove north back to Ulaanbaatar for one night. I’ve officially ended my loop of eastern Mongolia and now it’s time to start my loop of the north central region of Mongolia. I left Ulaanbaatar headed for the Khögnö Khan Uul Nature Reserve. On the way and due west about 130ish miles from Ulaanbaatar, I stopped at the ruins of Tsogt Taijiin Tsagaan Balgas (N 48.023346, E 104.351773). This was the home of the mother of…
The drive from Chinggis southwest to Sainshand was surprisingly easy. I had the wide open steppe with the usual animal herds in the first half. The second half of the trip was paved all the way. I did hit a pretty nasty thunder storm on the way, but I was happy about it since it cleaned a lot of the dust off the LandCruiser. I can actually see out the front window again, still not the back window, however. I…
I think I’m pretty well known for refusing to work on my birthday, but this year I took it a step further and took the whole week off to visit Yucatan, Mexico. Yucatan is a pretty small state and I know I can accomplish a lot on what is definitely the shortest international trip I’ve ever taken. I based myself in the Yucatan capitol of Mérida, dubbed the safest city in Mexico. Let’s hope so. Here’s a funny speculative story…
Greetings and salutations from planet earth’s newest country, Kosovo. As it turned out, my stress about this border crossing was unwarranted. Back in Nis, I turned in my rental car at noon and then was looking forward to finding a place to keep cool in the 100 degree temps because my bus didn’t leave until 6pm. But, the owner of the hotel I stayed at said he didn’t have any reservations for that night and I could use the room…
2020 pretty much sucked for everybody on Earth and my year certainly wasn’t without some hardship and heartbreak either. After spending the spring and early summer basically doing nothing due to being unable to find work anywhere, I finally got a gig in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. I was keen to start exploring again and having never been to that part of the country before, I was pretty happy about it. Wilkes-Barre is not a super exciting town, but turned out to…
Up with the sun, I left Wadi Musa in a car with a nice Czech couple to Wadi Rum about an hour and a half away. When people talk about the Arabian desert, this is usually the place they’re talking about. It’s arid, sandy, and hot, the Bedouin people have been living and thriving here for thousands of years, this was the home and stomping grounds of TE Lawrence of Arabia during the Arab revolts in the early 20th century,…