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 e didn’t realize the full extent of what lay ahead of us and how life threatening it would be; a long period of unimaginable thirst. Finally emerging from the quagmire of weariness that only extreme thirst can produce we at last found water—life saving water.  Later we saw a cluster of buildings in the distance not shown on our maps. Soon we entered an abysmally poor village and were astonished by the quantity of multihued glass from broken vodka bottles that lay scattered across the entire sandy area of the village. A few listless people stood watching us and after asking us where we were from they told us that we were the first non-Mongolians they had seen. Except for a few barely producing family gold mines in the surrounding rocky mountains there appeared to be no available work. After visiting the well to water the camels and top-off our water containers we forged ahead to make up for the time we had lost over the last week.
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