Mongolia
What happens in Kovsköl stays in Kovsköl

Johan Kruseman
Updated on 20 August 2024

In Kovsköl, I was greeted by a super diverse and cool group of travelers who had celebrated Naadam there and were now waiting for the rain to pass, which meant two days of card games. Here, I discovered that the cardgame I had learned in Kyrgyzstan turned out to be a real Russian card game called Durak, which came in handy a week later when we had to learn the Mongolian version from two guys who didn’t speak English. For the evening, a huge bonfire and a marinated and BBQ’d piece of meat weighing at least ten kilos were planned. The meat was already there, and there was more than enough according to every measure, so my contribution was broccoli, which was received as a true delicacy since Mongolia doesn’t do vegetables. And that appreciation was well-deserved because I had paid five euros in tughriks for two withered, blackened broccoli stalks. Since I hadn’t dared to imagine beforehand that the “broccoli” would be so well-received, I had also brought a bottle of Chinggis Khan vodka just to be safe. All of this resulted in an evening where I only saw what we had experienced that night (apparently) in the photos the next day. And “what happens in Kovsköl stays in Kovsköl” definitely applied to this evening.

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Traveled route: Ulaanbaatar, Kharkhorin, Hatgal, Khorgo, Tstetserleg, Red Waterfall, Zamiin-Uud

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Our horse escaped, giving some extra hangover recovery time

Mongolia is not a morning country. With a super cool English couple and a bizarrely strange German guy, we were about to start a two-day horse riding trip at 9:00 am. We were supposed to gather between 9:00 and 10:00 am, which already made us suspect

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Our horse escaped, giving some extra hangover recovery time

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Mongolia
What happens in Kovsköl stays in Kovsköl

Mongolia
Did this story inspire you to go to Mongolia? Read more on what Mongolia has to offer, what the best months are for visiting and check the handy links for backpacking there.