Day 3 started very slowly, it was our day on site so we all had a lie in, then waited for the Mongolian musicians and artists to arrive. Our morning activities started with sewing our names onto a piece of fabric. Time was limited so nobody finished this. This was followed by some traditional Mongolian music. The Morin Khuur, or horse head fiddle, is a two stringed instrument with a fairly amazing sound, and the Choor is a form of flute. We all listened to these instruments being played for a bit, then we had a go ourselves. The Morin Khuur is apparently as difficult to play as a violin so many of us sounded awful! Once we had all had a go and managed to get some form of sound out, the musicians played another tune that included some Humi (Mongolian Throat Singing). This was really incredible!.
After the musical demonstrations, we took a short break. Outside we noticed that the sky had closed in a little and it looked like a storm was on it’s way. We all stood outside taking a few shots of the storm, confident that it was not heading our way due to the direction of the wind, but within half an hour many of us we taking cover in the gers while the site was pelted with huge hail stones. Due to the fact we were perched on the side of a mountain, we all sprung into action checking each of the gers for leaks, packing people’s kit and trying to manage the storm damage. The rains continued until the site was in the middle of a foot deep torrent of water gushing down from the mountain. Once we had packed the kit from every ger, it was time to evacuate site. Thankfully there was a shelter in Zuunmod that we were able to use. Most groups were picked up from whereever they had been based during the day and brought straight to the shelter, much to the confusion of the groups that were not hit.
