Travel journals are the perfect way to record your experiences and observations. Some of the memories may be better than others but it’s always great to have the opportunity to relive your trips. I recently looked back at a journal of mine that chronicled a 13-month round the world trip my wife Lianne and I took nine years ago. I still get shivers when I think about the night that we survived in a Mongolian yurt with hundreds, if not thousands of spiders…
The Canary in the Coal Mine
Lianne had been adamant, “When we go to Mongolia, I want to stay in a yurt and ride a camel!” She would repeat this seemingly every day.
I personally didn’t see the big deal, but she had put up with tons of my travel requests, so I agreed. When we arrived in Ulaanbaatar, we found a local guide who talked up staying in a local family’s yurt to “get away from other tourists and experience life like the locals.”
The next morning, we drove to Terelj National Park and met the local family who would be our hosts. I should have been on alert when they told us they had not had any visitors for several weeks. We had a magnificently paired dinner of spaghetti noodles with hot sauce and soy sauce. On the side we were given pickles and yogurt which was washed down with instant coffee…what a treat!
It started out so nice.
The battlefield
Battle Lines are Drawn
After dinner we retired to our yurt to play rummy and escape the cold. The first hour or so was fine until a spider the size of my palm (just a slight exaggeration) rappelled onto our bed. In the creepiest manner possible it sprinted for a dark corner.
I shrieked in terror and smashed him with a shoe. At that moment we got the strange feeling of being watched. A scan of the yurt revealed my biggest fear materialized and I got chills. It was infested by (this is a conservative estimate) hundreds of these creepy crawlies.
Apparently, the arachnids were nocturnal because where there had been none before there were now countless 8-legged beasties. There were several spider varieties of different colors, size and hairiness. They were scuttling on the floor, in corners, on the other beds and on the ceiling. The closest town was miles away and the outside temperature was in the 30s. For all intents and purposes, we were captive. I was absolutely terrified.
This was one of the cute ones.
The Arachnid War
The arachnid war commenced over the next several hours. Spiders would charge out of dark corners or drop from the ceiling and we would swat or squash the advancing crawlers. They would seemingly retreat, regroup and hit us again. It was like the movie “Kill Bill” with Lianne and I employing our ninja skills and standing back to back as the spider corpses piled up.
After several hours the attacking spider numbers started to dwindle. We squeezed onto one of the single beds and wrapped ourselves like burritos for protection. We spent the entire night (sleeping is not an appropriate term) taking periodic three-minute naps and jolting awake to check for enemy intruders. As the sun rose, we stepped out of the yurt like survivors of a zombie apocalypse.
We were greeted by our Mongolian hosts, “How was sleep?” We lied in unison, “Okay.” After breakfast and four cups of coffee we went to explore the national park and fulfilled Lianne’s second Mongolian dream. We rode camels. I must say it was a much more pleasant experience than her first idea.
Just happy to have survived the night.
Lianne got her camel ride in…
Do you keep a travel journal? Have you had any “scary” encounters like this in your travel? Let us know in the comments below!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Great story. Glad you only posted one picture of a spider or else I’d be having nightmares. Lesson learned…No yurts…
Thanks Tim. It was a rough night lol.
That picture is not of a spider, however. It’s from the family Opiliones, the Daddy Long legs. They vaguely resemble spiders, but they actually EAT spiders. They’re long legs let them get overtop of them to bite down and carry them off.
You may have unwittingly disturbed a nest of them, and then killed a bunch of harmless critters that would have kept you safe from their more dangerous arachnid cousins! They also can’t bite humans. Fyi!
Great story either way! Fun read.
Thanks Eric! I’m glad to know this but it’s a bit late for me now lol. These guys didn’t seem as scary as the spiders that we encountered that night and now I know why. It would have been great to know that these guys were actually on our side in the the arachnid war.
I am just thinking how you could have EASILY saved the next 7 years of travelers a horrid night in that yurt IF you had mentioned to the host that we “foreigners” are not used to spiders… at least they would sprayed Raid or something (if they cared)…. it can be a scarring experience for people who have arachnophobia…
GG FORT
That is a great point lol. I’m pretty scared of spiders and wish someone before me had shared the horrors. I’ll remember that advice next time (even though I hope to never relive something like this).
Thanks for the interesting trip down memory lane! We had a similar night of no sleep in a nice cabin that filled with bats one night in Idaho. Actually we got a little sleep because we retreated to our van parked outside & caught a few hours. The next morning, an examination of the previously clean cabin & tidy cabin showed bat droppings in our bed and on everything.
During this time of limited travel, I would suggest more interesting stories, keep them coming!
Thanks for the comment Vince! I have a few more up my sleeve that I hope to share soon. The bat story sounds a bit scary as well but thankfully you had the van as a backup!
Once my roommate and wife to be stopped in Kingman AZ late at night and very tired. We stopped at a place that advertised camping. There were few campers and all in RVs. We were just going to sleep in sleeping bags on the ground. The host said we were welcome to camp for a small fee but not many do because there are so many snakes. We were very tired from hiking up the S Rim of the Grand Canyon so decided to sleep there anyway. I recall listening for snakes (do they make noise when they slither?) for about 10 seconds before falling asleep. We all woke up fine the next AM.
Man I would have had a tough time getting sleep knowing there were lots of snakes around. I’m glad you all escaped that one unscathed!
Bravo, Ross. Your story is full of heart and humor.–Love, Aunt Susie,
Thanks Aunt Susie!