Day 34 guess where we are?

Day 34 August 26th from Kate in Ulaanbaator- hooray!

Well we made it! At 7 pm this evening we entered the city limits of UB and were immediately stuck in a traffic jam for the next hour! But we made it to the finish line just after 8 p.m. We were the 102nd and 103rd vehicles to finish out of 376 that started. Having driven 8, 500 miles in 34 days. So the tortoises did good.

We camped last night in the Mongolian equivalent of the central reservation of the M5. As I have said these main roads often consist of multiple tracks across the countryside all going in slightly different directions and in some cases the outlying ones can be easily half a mile apart. In this case there was an area about 500 yards wide between tracks, of grassland so we camped there. We have been using the tents because the ambulances are so full of sandy dust that they are untenable for sleeping in.

We set off early and by 10 o’clock we hit tarmac – oh joy! So then we were speeding along at 50 mph, whilst keeping a beady eye open for the occasional vicious pothole. Then it dawned on me that driving on tarmac now seemed rather boring in comparison with what we had been doing before. We stopped in a small village to buy bread and more ‘wet wipes’ (these have been essential for regular washing), and promptly met the same, as we thought, German guy who pulled Eagle 1 out of the first river they got stuck in. He is in fact Swiss and he and a friend have shipped their cars to Mongolia to go touring – as you do! Anyway 6 kilometers back down the road he told us he had met an English girl who was stuck because her bus had broken down. So Eagle 1, which has a seat in the back went off to the rescue. The Swiss guy had no seats free at all. In theory Eagle 2 has a row of seats but that is where we have been carrying the two side panels that dropped off Eagle 1 so the seats are unusable. So is the bed come to that, which is why I have been sleeping on the floor. Anyway Eagle 1 returned having found an American couple from the rally whose car had broken down n Khovd who had then got a bus for UB and their flight was due to leave UB at 18.20. The bus journey had been due to take 36 hours but they had already been on it for 50 hours and now it was broken down. Anyway Eagle 1 took them to a long distance taxi rank and we just hope they made their flight.

It’s late now and we are in a nice hotel for a few nights. We all feel extremely pleased and satisfied to have made it – night night.

Day 33 Stuck in the Gobi

Day 33 25th August from Kate on our way to Arvayer, Mongolia

Didn’t get quite as far as planned today because of a couple of incidents. We had camped just 100 yards off the road last night so after breakfast we made our way back to the road – only Eagle 1 got stuck in soft sand. Eagle 2 then made its way to the road – using a different route and then tried to pull Eagle 1 out. Only the rope broke. A passing minibus came to help and promptly got himself stuck in the sand as well! So now there was Eagle 2 with two vehicles to rescue. We were digging with a spade, putting stones under the wheels, pushing and all sorts, but to no avail. Eagle 2 managed to pull out the minibus, they had a wire rope with them, but Eagle 1 was still stuck. Then from over the hill out of the sunrise came a vision, a machine that got larger and larger. Do you remember the scene in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ when Omar Shariff came out of the mirage in the desert on his camel? Well it was just like that. The machine when it arrived had wheels almost as tall as I am and had pictures of camel trains on its side. It was driven by a guy whose job is to guide people though the Sahara Desert – how cool is that? How lucky were we that such a guy with such a vehicle should turn up out of the blue? He pulled Eagle 1 out of the sand in a trice and on he went. On the side of his machine it said: ‘This is not a Unimog, this is not just any truck, this is a Magirus Deutz’.

So we proceeded on our way and once again we found that somehow we had left the main road and ended up on a side road. It is so difficult here to keep on the right road there are always so many to choose from. Any way we got back on course and here we are camping out again under what is really a full moon this time – but no camels.

We met an interesting guy today when we stopped to ask the way in a ger vllage (I am never quite sure how to spell ger, so there are probably multiple versions in these blogs). Anyway this guy was an Irishman who was flying across Mongolia. His flying equipment consisted of a parascending type parachute thingy plus a backpack which had his gear in it and an engine with propeller! How crazy is that? We never saw him take off, and I can’t imagine how he did it, but later on we saw him flying over the nearby hills into the sunset.

One of the features of being here in Mongolia is the children. In even the remotest places kids will appear by the roadside flagging us down. I have very mixed feelings about them. Basically they are begging, asking for food and gifts. They all look perfectly healthy and well fed. So what should we do? Generally we just drive on, but when we need to stop we are soon surrounded by children all clamouring for stuff. I am rather unsympathetic I’m afraid. But as Chris says they are living in ghers in the middle of nowhere what else do they have to do with their time. On the other hand where we got stuck in the river there was a school in the village funded by Mercy Corps, which is one of the charities funder by the Mongol Rally. So I am very happy to support the children in that way through charities like this and Christina Noble rather than giving them sweets in the street.

 

day 32 Lost in the Gobi

Day 32 24th August from Kate in the Gobi desert

I am now sitting in the Gobi next to our two ambulances in the middle of the desert. The sun is just setting and out of the sunset a herd of wild camels is walking towards us. There is a full moon that is still white against the day sky but will soon be illuminating our fine dining on compo rations.

 

We set off from Altay in fine form and after an hour stopped for a breakfast of fried egg sandwiches. We then proceeded on our way to Baganhoggur although not expecting to reach it in one day’s drive, but continuing our journey through the Gobi desert. It was a typical Mongolian road lots of different tracks all heading vaguely in the same direction. We stopped for an early lunch because we thought there was a problem with Eagle 1’s clutch, then we found that Eagle 2 had yet another puncture. Now when I say puncture what I mean is a flat tyre. Quite often these flat tyres are due to the valve somehow leaking or the metal wheel rim having been distorted by hitting a rock. Anyway on we go. It then begins to dawn on us that we might not be on the right road, we have not seen the village that we were supposed ot have gone through. So I get out my Tomtom, not that it has a map of Mongolia, but because it can tell us the latitude and longitude of where we are. This it does and confirms that we are in fact on a side road rather south of where we thought we should be. All we can do is go on as this road is due to rejoin the main road rather further on. We then come to a river crossing. Eagle 1 has had problems with these before. This time a friendly motorcyclist offers to show the way to get across as we are right by a gher village. This he does and leads Eagle 1 into deep water where they get stuck. (Fancy getting stuck in the only river in the Gobi). On the other side of this river is another rally team, a Danish ambulance, who fared even worse, their engine has been flooded by river water and they have been waiting most of the day for a rescue truck. They tell us that ten other teams have passed that way – so all of us were on the wrong road! We still do not exactly understand why. Any way Eagle 2 was shown the best route for crossing the river which involved a right angled turn half way across. Eagle 2 was then able to pull out our beleaguered partners. Chris then tried to help the Danes but all in vain so we left them to await the tow truck.

One of the sad things about these corrugated roads is that we are shaken, rattled and rolled so much that bits are dropping off. One of Eagle 2’s blue lights was hanging by a thread from the roof because the two 4 inch screws holding it on had unscrewed themselves. Our siren has fallen off and disappeared as has one of our front blue lights.

Camping is great on this trip, we are completely self sufficient and all is peaceful – night night.

Day 30 Badly corrugated

Day 30 22nd August from Kate between Hovd and Altay in Mongolia

A short blog tonight as I sit under a nearly full Mongolian moon communicating via satellite. We have managed about 130 miles today in 10 hours driving. The road has been badly corrugated all the way – miserable. We keep taking side tracks when we can or friendly detours as I call them as they tend to be better going but they are not there all the time. It is dawning on us that it is going to take us longer than we thought to get to UB.

So now we are covered in dust again and we have pitched our tent. Immediately we have been visited by a Mongolian family who came bringing gifts of food and drink. We gave them some sweets and a football.

Chris’s brother Nigel will be interested to hear that the water we filled our large plastic containers with at his house before we left is still proving invaluable. I was drinking some only this evening!**

day20 low on fuel

Day 20 12th August from Kate north of Tashkent

We left Samarqand having calculated that we had just enough fuel to get us to the border north of Tashkent and maybe a bit beyond. Uzbekistan does have sign posts but every now and then they leave out a vital one! All the locals know, for example that a motorway isn’t finished yet and that you should turn off before the big new bridge and go off in another direction. We, of course, did not and twice we did extra miles with our precious fuel going on the wrong road. Then horror of horrors we found that the border we had aimed for was closed – road works apparently. We were told that we had to retrace our steps by fifty miles and find a small village on a yellow road where we could cross. By the time we found this out it was getting dark so we have parked up by a street side cafe, had supper (not dinner or tea because I am from the south!) then went to bed. Fortunately we have been able to text to our son Richard who has come back with some splendidly detailed instructions on how to find the new border post. As to the fuel, well Tashkent seems to be the only place in Uzbekistan that has petrol so Eagle 1 was able fill up. Eagle 2 is in a bit of trouble though. We have been told that there is no diesel in the whole country, all we have is our half can from the back street dealer in Samarqand.

Not one of our better days.

Day 2 nearly 500 miles

 Day 2  Sunday 25th July from Kate: Well 487 miles today, a very long slog along motorways all the way. Our elderly vehicles do not progress at the same speed as the German Porsche drivers, in fact we do well to make 50 mph down hill with a following wind! We stopped every two hours to change drivers and had a break for lunch and it took us from 7.30 this morning until 9.00 tonight. We are now at a campsite in Nuremberg and Jemma is cooking omelettes.What is nice that along the way we are regularly overtaken by fellow Mongol Rallyists and there is lots of hooting and waving.

The main revelation today has been that our highly scientific inch long key ring weather station (which still only seems to register temperatures of around 80F) has a wind chill factor chart on the back – how good is that?