Day 24: We bought two big bottles of water ($1) and hit the road from Dalanzadgad to the Yolin Am Canyon. The canyon is located just south of the road that runs between Dalanzadgad and Bayandalai, and since we now knew that that road was paved and had plenty of traffic on it, we figured that hitching to the canyon wouldn’t be too difficult. We had our winter camping gear and enough food and water for several more days, just in case we got stuck.
We had our thumbs out on the main road by about 1pm. A couple of cars stopped and were confused about what we were doing. They offered us a lift for a large sum of money. We declined the offer and kept on hitching. About 10 minutes later, we got the perfect lift- a local family was driving all the way to the canyon and offered us a free ride! We squeezed in the back seat with two little kids.
The drive to Yolin Am was spectacular. We drove into the mountains off the paved road and down into the canyon. The rock walls grew taller as road got narrower until eventually...we ran into a parking lot. There were a lot more people in Yolin Am than we expected, but they were basically all local families.
The first thing we did was climb a small hill at the entrance of the park, where we spotted some Mongolian yaks.
to be continued soon... ;)