Mongolian Cairn
 

ahoy hoy.
just thought i would throw this shot up.
from Chinese National Holidays when i was in Inner Mongolia (the Chinese province, not the country)

this is a cairn that i shot at sunrise. i had spent the night in a Yurt, where the temperature had dipped to minus 16 C (3 F) and had set my alarm for what i thought would be the time of sunrise.

this is what i was rewarded with.

I shat some corn at sunrise myself. ;)

Seriously though, thats a nice payoff.

what is a yurt?

yurt.

~james

(yûrt)
A circular, domed, portable tent used by nomadic peoples of central Asia

yurt is the russian word
menggubao is the chinese word
ger is the mongolian word

this is a photo of two of them that same morning

These are excellent shots to see how many colors your monitor can display. That sky contains 'em all.

indeed.
it was one of those spectacular mornings.
my alarm had gone off at 5am or something equally unpleasant.
generally i grumble, curse, or hope for it to be cloudy so i can go back to bed.

however on this particular occasion i crawled out of my sleeping bag on the hard floor of the yurt, past the sputtering coal-fired stove that had died sometime during the night, and made my way to the door of the yurt.

the night before i hadn't bothered to look on my compass exactly which way we were facing. but as i looked out the window of the yurt - clad in my thermal underwear to ward of the freezing temperatures - i knew immediately. the sky was ablaze. the cairn was visible as a silhouette against this firey dawn.

i went from wanting to crawl back into my bag to dashing across this frozen landscape with tripod in hand.

it was a good morning.

Let me just say two things.

One, it's awesome that you're having a good time out there. I'm envious, because my career hasn't taken me to Asia yet - but glad for you, since yours has.

And secondly, many deep thanks for sharing it with us. I truly appreciate it.

my pleasure dave.

one of the most satisfying (gratifying?) parts of photography for me is the ability to share some of my work with others.

and yes - i am having a tremendous time misadventuring in mandarin here in shanghai.

i am hoping to write up a proper missive about my mongolian experience in the next little bit. when that happens i will post another pic, with a link to the .pdf story.

stay tuned.

Very cool Snag. Keep on posting.

Yurts aren't just for Mongols anymore. Woops you can get this link from Perths. If you live somewhere with flexible building codes its a great option. Unfortunately word on the street is unusual construction and owner building are dead in Pennsylvania, due to legislative action. Makes me wish I had taken a few more chances...maybe I can use something different in an addition.