A Custom More Honoured In the Breach

Wait! I have a drone! I can put my camera in the air and point it at me. This turns out to be the absolutely perfect drone shoot, using it as a mobile still camera. I can move the camera to any position, from the safety of my little eyrie, and the location is large enough and with few enough people that we’re not getting in one another’s way.

After breakfast it’s back in the jeeps for the long drive back to Ulaanbaatar. I’d like to say the long relaxing drive back but that would be untrue. In addition to our driver’s habit of late breaking even when we can all clearly see a hazard, is his habit of ignoring the generally accepted convention that Mongolia drives on the right. I get that he has to not only overtake but sometimes move left to avoid a pothole, however he also frequently drives in the left lane for long stretches even when we can see distant oncoming traffic. The worst case is where he decides to do this going round a blind left-hand band in a clearly-marked “no overtaking” zone, for no apparent reason than he finds it more aesthetically pleasing…

We manage a coffee stop in what is rapidly becoming our favourite coffee shop in Mandangovi, and then take lunch at the airport. This turns out not to be as daft as it sounds: the new airport is well-positioned about an hour out of the capital, there’s good parking, and Oyu has booked an excellent lunch at the Japanese Noodle Restaurant in the arrivals hall. The only problem is the usual one – the first course is generous, and then another, larger, course arrives!

After lunch we have the final short drive to the hotel, and a few hours to ourselves. However we have a long day tomorrow starting very early with an internal flight, so most of us spend the time repacking ready for that. An early, very light dinner and a few beers set us up for an early night.

[Technical note: I’m very pleased with my drone, the diminutive DJI Mini Pro 3 which seems highly capable despite its small size. However there’s a general problem with DJI RAW files – Capture One and some other common RAW processors don’t support them. The In-camera JPEGs are good, and I’ve used them for this blog, but it looks like getting a good generic solution integrated with my existing workflow and at acceptable cost is going to be non-trivial. I’ll write more on this if/when I find an answer.]