A rollercoaster of a day
18AugIt’s cold this morning, enough so that we need our thermals! I struggle starting the car. With no choke I have to remove the top of the carburetor and choke it manually, warm the engine, and then put it together. We have around 400 miles to the Mongolian border, and we’d love to get across today. That would see us one day ahead of our schedule. The roads to the border are supposed to be good bitumen, so we have a good chance.
Not far into the morning the engine drops a cylinder. I stop at a petrol station to investigate. It’s No.2 cylinder, and when I remove the spark plug, there is oil smoke smoldering from inside. A truck stops at the service station, and the driver looks over my shoulder as I work. We can’t communicate by talking, but the common automotive knowledge allows some communication, and at the sight of the smoke he gives me a worried look. The plug is completely fouled, so I clean it and replace it, but it’s still not firing. Oh dear, is this the beginning of the end? We drive on until we reach a mountain pass. We can’t even climb the small hill before the pass. I stop on the side of the road and remove the plug again. The truck from the service station stops behind me. He has no load, and I’m not sure i he is just being friendly, or if he is looking to charge me to transport the car. This time I put a replacement plug in No.2, and it’s back on 4 cylinders. We make it up the pass with flying colours. The truck driver has been waiting at the top of the pass to check our progress – a nice guy!
At the bottom of the pass, it’s a bit of a crisis. You can see the hill we have just struggled to climb is not very steep!
...but back on 4 cylinders we’re soon at the top
In the Altai region we saw a lot of this hanging of old fabric from trees, as some sort of a memorial. We still don’t know what it is about, but we didn’t find it particularly beautiful:
...the breathtaking views continue
We pass a green Suzuki SJ from the rally going the opposite direction. What’s with that? We flash our lights but they don’t stop. Visa problems perhaps?
We have been aiming for cheese and bread for lunch at 1pm, but at 12:55 we enter a village and see the Yak to the Future Citroen 2CV outside a café. These are th guys we saw in Almaty. Inside they are eating a meal of Plov and fish. Plov is a Russian meal of rice with meat. The fish is fresh from the river, apparently th lady caught it yesterday. The Citroen guys have a method of walking into the kitchen when they go to a restaurant, and pointing at the food they want. We’re happy with their selection so we order a duplicate. This was a fine lunch, and really cheap. The Citroen leaves before we start our food.
After lunch we drive for a couple of hours and then pass through the second last town before the border. The terrain has changed from mountains to a big plain. It’s green, but there are no trees. It’s starting to look very Mongolian. We become suspicious that the last town before the border isn’t very big, so 2 miles ou of town we do a u-turn and head back to fill up with fuel and water. It turns out to be a good decision. There is no more 92 fuel before the border (and thus no more before Ulanbaatar, some 1900km away).
As we re-enter the town we are flagged down by a group of people. They turn out to be predominantly Russian tourists, from places including Siberia. They are traveling together in a convoy of four cars, and flagged us down as they wanted a picture with us. This was a great group of people with excellent English.
The pit toilets gradually got worse as we get close to the Mongolian border. In Mongolia they basically disappear altogether:
Typical houses before the border, making use of the wood from the Altai forests we presume:
It’s 30km across the plain to the border. It’s at the base of some rolling mountains. The border is your normal Russian job, very official, lots of uniforms etc. There is a party of about four Australian cars coming through the border from the other way. They have traveled from Vladivostok to UB, and are now heading acros Russian to Kazakhstan, and then Western Europe. They are very talkative and give us lots of information on the roads. They are all aged around 50, and are so Australian! The ladies keep warning us that you can’t buy meat. It’s tagged on to the end of every sentence...and there’s no meat. There is a French couple also i their party, and when a couple of Russians get let in front at the Customs queue, they fly off the handle. There is suddenly raised voices in English, Russian and French, with no one understanding anyone. I can’t believe it! What a time to lose your temper.
We make it through the border with no problems, but the lady at passport control warns me sternly as she stamps my passport, ‘Visa finished’! That is, if you don’t get into Mongolia you’re not coming back. This border has only been open since around 2004. There is a 30km stretch of no mans land. It is a dead straight road which passes over the mountains. At the top of the hill is a lonely Russian, checking that you have actually come through the border post 15km earlier. Ther is a fence marking the division between the two countries, and a post with both flags on it. On one side of the fence is the beautiful bitumen we have enjoyed since leaving Kazakhstan. On the other side is a dirt road – welcome to Mongolia.
The road up the hill from the Russian border post:
Welcome to Mongolia! Looking back at the Russian side of no-mans land as we start off on the Mongolian dirt. The road basically got worse from here.
At the bottom of the hill is the Mongolian border post. All of the Mongolian officials are trying to do underhand deals for Mongolian currency. We manage to change our Kazakhstan Tenge for Mongolian. I was really worried there would be problems importing our car into Mongolia. Tim and I had elected not to donate the car to charity in UB, which meant our car was a different case to every other car on the rally. My concerns were not warranted however. It was only 15 minutes before the border was due to close, and they just wanted us through. There was practically no paperwork.
Also at the border is the Citroen. We’ve been bumping into them all day, and we decide to camp somewhere together for the night. They are held up buying some car insurance, so we leave the border ahead of them, agreeing to wait for them 500m on the other side. Borders are not places you want to wait around, particularly when you’re not sure about the importation of your car.
The big decision for today has been which way to go in Mongolia. From the border, there is one road proceeding east to Tsagannuur. After that the road forks. There is a road to the North, which proceeds to Ulaangom and then across the mountains to UB. There is a road to the South, which is longer, but supposed to be much easier. It crosses deserts and has no where near as nice scenery. Along with Yak to the Future, we’ve decided to attempt the North road. I’ve wanted to do this since the start of the rally, and is one of the reasons I bought a Suzuki SJ in the first place. Our 4wd ability and ground clearance should be well suited to the road.
We coast down the hill from the border, there is a bang, and instantly I know what has happened. Stephen verifies the problem. The rear left spring has snapped. We have just passed mechanic after mechanic in Russia. Now we’re in Mongolia, and there is nothing but Gers (Mongolian version of a Yurt) in front of us. We have no spare spring this time, nor do we have the tools to remove the old one. This time the spring has broken poorly. The two top leaves have snapped, and there is nothing stopping the diff from moving backwards. My heart sinks. The Citroen arrives. We watch them drive off into the distance as we limp along on the dirt at 10mph. We catch up to them when they stop to talk to some cyclists. These two guys have been riding around for 2 years, something like from France to Vladivostok to UB, then down through China, India, Pakistan, then back to UB, and now riding back to France. They recommend we go to the next town on the lake and camp there This is the town of Tsagannuur. The town is in sight, but in Mongolia we quickly learn you can see a long long way. The Citroen takes off, and we soon lose them.
Stephen contemplates the broken spring. You can see the entry to Mongolia border in the distance behind us. We could have done a much better repair if the spring had broken in Russia.
It’s a bad break this time, two leaves means there is nothing to locate the diff on this side of the car:
Tsagannuur is a scattering of buildings and Gers. A lot of the buildings seem to be abandoned. We spot the Citroen driving with a local inside, and we follow them. It is like a surreal 10mph police chase! We stop at a cluster of 2 Gers, and are all invited inside. Apparently the Citroen guys have asked for a place to sleep, and we have been brought here. The family will host us for the evening.
Inside the Ger is very nicely decorated. It has a wooden frame, a TV, some sort of battery power unit (possibly solar powered), 1 light bulb, a central copper stove, and pictures on the walls. We are served warm milk (I believe goats milk) and some special fried bread. We each get 2 bowls of milk. We use the Russian phrase book and our Mongolian Lonely Planet to communicate. There is a husband and wife of about 40 years, the sister of the wife and her husband and their grandmother. Then there is children to both couples, totaling about 8. The oldest is a girl who I think is 10. She works really hard around the Ger, helping to prepare the meal and keep the stove full with fuel. This is a treeless landscape and they appear to be burning the low spindly bushes which they have dried. We show them maps of where we have been, and the two routes to UB. They advise against the north road to UB. The man picks a word from the phrase book which translates to ‘bog’ to describe the road to Ulaangom. We all laugh.
Dinner is served, and what a meal it is! We all sit on tiny stools around a round low table. We are made to wash our hands and pray before we eat. The meal is served on a central plate. The centre piece is a whole sheep’s head, which has been boiled in a broth with onion and other random pieces of sheep – the intestines, the stomach, the ribs, the trotters. They’ve also rolled some pastry, cut it in strips, and added it to the broth. A man from the next door Ger has come over, and he and the man who road in the Citroen set about cutting all of the available meat of everything. Some of the meat (and the eyeballs) is put on another plate and given to the children. We then pick at the remaining meat with our hands. I eat some tripe, a couple of trotters, meat off the head, some and a few bits of the pastry. I am famished, and most of this has been boiled for so long it tastes the same, and it’s pretty good. The stomach is very tough and furry, the trotter has a lot of cartilage, and I give the intestine a miss. After the meal we are served the broth in bowls. It is very oily buy quite good. The girl is now hitting a solid lump of some brown substance with a hammer. I presume it is dung for the fire, but they tell me it is Chai (tea), and sure enough, sh adds it to the pot on the stove. The tea is good, but is very milky. It’s getting to be more milk than I can handle.
Dinner. We hope to get some better photos from inside the Ger from Yak to the Future...in the future. They had a good SLR camera.
The man takes a photo album from the roof of the Ger. These people are Kazakhs, and I think they have moved to this part of Mongolia, as there are photos in another part of Kazakhstan in the book. Actually we learn the western part of Mongolia is all Kazakhs. They are Muslim, whereas in the east people are Budhist. There is a picture of our host in the Mongolian army, I’m not sure whether it’s compulsory service or not. I take a closer look at the Ger. It is held up by a radial wooden frame, with 15cm between supports at the circumference. The walls are supported by lattice. The floor is lino, laid on the dirt. There are lots of colourful rugs and quilts. Everything is clean. There is a sideboard with the cutlery and bowls, a large mirror. It’s all quite civilized. In the centre of the roof is a big round hole. It’s covered by fabric which can be adjusted using a rope. There is no privacy for anyone inside the Ger. They are confused why we all have no children, especially Stephen and I as we are considerably older than Joe and Tim from Yak to the Future.
We sleep on the floor in our sleeping bags on rugs. There is no where near enough room for 4 men, so we spend the night cuddled together with Joe and Tim, whom we hardly know. While we lie in our sleeping bags, the whole family just seems to stand and stare at us, waiting for our next move. What can be so exciting about watching us trying to sleep?
This was a pretty interesting day, but I’m not looking forward to tomorrow in the slightest.
Our cars outside the Ger.
