Nov 15 2007
Mankhan soum and Ash* revisited…
As pointed out by my ever-alert friends, I am being bad. There are some nice Ash* people too that I mentally misplaced, so it’s totally mean of me. Though I will leave up my post, let it be known that I am duly chastened for making a sweeping generalization.
Ahem. Sorry Ash-from-down-the-hall-at-old-work. I like you 
On the other hand…the trip yesterday was pretty cool. Mankhan soum is about 80 km south of Khovd center and there are a surprising number of trees out there. One of the other passengers, a Ministry of Health person, said that they planted them in the 30s or 40s. They were probably about a foot in diameter and leafless.
On the way there, we stopped at the lake where I’ve picnicked with coworkers before – except now you can walk on it. I don’t think I like the concept of frozen lakes – they’re scary and can crackle alarmingly:
We also went to a place with cave paintings – I was told it is the largest cave (painting? not sure) in Asia and 10th-largest in the world. On the way, the soum (county) governor’s jeep got stuck, but we eventually got it out:
We got to the caves around dusk (6ish pm) so we couldn’t see too much. The best view I got was from the camera flash here:
It was scary in that it’s a slightly steep switchback up to the cave and some people were wearing heeled (as in more spike than heel) boots. Tumbling would not be good. I also saw some rocks that were very strange – a grayish metallic sheen and they tended to fragment in sheets. Given the randomness of contamination here (fueled by my paranoia or newspaper reporting on mining) I left it, though.
Maybe when people (coughbonmaybecough) visit Khovd we could go out there again.
