Erdene Zuu Monastery. Photos by Will Parson.
It’s been just over a month since I washed the last bits of Mongolian soil out of my pores with a long, hot shower in a hotel near the airport in Beijing (our connection was delayed). The absolutely official end to my journey came with a bite into my double cheeseburger from In N’ Out on the 60th night since leaving home.
There is another end to be celebrated: the end of my vigorous editing sessions in which I whittled 10,000 rough exposures down to three polished galleries. The gallery “Saga” follows the adventures of Team Great Job! from Dusseldorf to Ulaanbaatar and can be seen as a nice addendum to the Mongol Saga series on this blog. Meanwhile, the “Mongolia” and “Europe” galleries on my site are pretty self explanatory. I hope you like diptychs.
Our expedition can be considered a resounding success considering the perils that befell other rally teams – plenty of cars never made it, and one acquaintance of ours is currently in England recuperating from a broken back sustained in a head-on collision with a jeep in the middle of Mongolia. Somehow, despite an incredibly unsure start, our car made it in one piece, and was in such good shape that it’s appraised value actually increased, so much so that the charity officials gladly took it off our hands. From snowy Western Mongolia to the Gobi desert to Erdene Zuu Monastery to Ulaanbaatar, there are just too many anecdotes I could tell that I am just going to let the photos tell the story.
The one thing I’ll mention is that fording a snowy river in Western Mongolia made me feel pretty damn manly. I mention that because with two hands gripped firmly to the steering wheel I couldn’t take any photos as proof. The photo at the bottom is of another car crossing the same river to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
In other news, look for a guest post on the Meridian blog soon by my friend Bolek, a photographer whom I met when we stayed with him in Poland (thank you Couchsurfing).
That’s it. The end. Though, I can’t wait to go back.
Western Mongolia, half a day east of Olgii
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