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Diary w/e 6 August
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31st JulyWe kicked the dust of UB off our heels once again (or rather, we exchanged it for some different dust). We checked out of our hotel, loaded up the car again (it was fine after three days under surveillance a couple of blocks away from the hotel) bought a couple of extra maps, changed some more travellers cheques and bought a few basic supplies for the road. We then headed out of town towards the west (after filling up with diesel) and took the road (a paved road!) towards Karakoram, the ancient capital of the Mongols. We stopped for lunch a few hundred metres off the main road, about twenty miles outside UB. It was nice to be back in the countryside eating cheese and tomato baguettes (home made), but we did see an absolutely gross bug (about 6 or 7 cm long, not counting the tail) crawling around near the car which made us hurry up and set off again. Initially the road was very good but after about fifty miles it started to become very potholed, making progress extremely slow and bumpy, as well as potentially quite dangerous for the car. You could tell when it got really bad because suddenly there appeared a whole braid of other dirt roads running alongside it - the tracks made in the traditional way by resourceful Mongolian drivers avoiding the potholes. It was quite weird seeing a deserted paved road and a fair amount of traffic weaving along this multilane dirt highway alongside. After about 20 miles of this, the dirt tracks dried up and we suddenly hit the beginning of a stretch of really excellent road, better than anything else we have seen in Mongolia - it even had white lines painted down the middle. Suddenly, instead of wobbling along at 20 and 30 mph, we were humming along at 60+; and instead of worrying about whether we would get to our planned stop by midnight, we were wondering whether we would get there too early. We think this might have been a government project called the Millennium Highway, which appears to have run out of funding in about 1746. We turned a bend and came over a crest and suddenly saw a wide valley laid out across our path with a small stream meandering through it. Bizarrely, a large range of sand dunes were also marching down the valley alongside the stream. The countryside around was quite green, we were not in any kind of desert, yet here were some random sand dunes apparently lost in the wrong place. But they weren't lost, and nor were we. These were the "Mongol Els" dunes, and they were our consolation prize for not being able to reach the massive Khongoryn Els sand dunes in the Gobi a couple of weeks ago because of our little breakdown. They weren't that impressive close to, so we only had a very quick peek at them before heading back along the road to find one of the ger camps which had been signposted a couple of miles back. We were attracted by the "New" markers on the signs for the Dugana Khad camp, and thought we would give it a try (about 10 km up a track off the main road) We found what seemed like a nice camp, all very new (indeed some of it still under construction). Our gers were really quite luxurious, and there was even a camp cat to stroke (the first we have seen since England, we suddenly realised). It seemed to be a joint venture of two or three families, and it looked as if we were the only guests. They had electric light and even a socket in each ger (though it was generator powered, and a bit erratic). It was nicely nestled in its own little valley, with an interesting looking ridge running around behind it about 500 feet above. We had dinner, then G and I decided to trek up to the nearest part of the ridge to see what the view was like. It was rather nice - we could see the ger camp laid out below us, and the shadow of the ridge we were on creeping up the mountains across the valley to the east. We raced back down because we had a hot shower booked at 9.30, and you are never quite sure what might happen if you don't turn up at the appointed hour. It was pleasant (though again a bit of a trickle - I suppose water must be a bit scarce) and I was looking forward to tucking up for an early night. We found though that our ger had been invaded by an army of small black beetles while we had been out (with air support from a large squadron of grasshoppers of various sizes). Their trick was to climb up the inside walls, start creeping up the underside of the roof and then drop off at random places, landing on beds, people, stoves or anything else. When they landed on the floor or some other hard surface, they made a characteristic clicking sound. At one point, it sounded like it was just starting to rain, so many beetles were clattering to the lino floor. I have to admit I wasn't going to let a little thing like a thunderstorm of beetles worry me after my two previous nights' "sleep", and in almost no time I was fast asleep - I'm not sure whether the various itches I felt were actual beetles crawling around under my bedclothes or dreams. Either way, I was drifting off pleasantly when the door burst open and Rich roared in. He said his ger was absolutely infested with bugs and he wanted to sleep in one of the spare beds in ours, to avoid being beetlerained on. I grunted in a reassuringly sympathetic assenting parental sort of way and then helpfully went back to sleep. After not very long there was a further explosion of activity as Rich decided the level of beetle infestation in our ger was not greatly better than in his previous quarters and so he was going to retreat to the trusty bugproof tent on top of the Land Rover. I grunted in a reassuringly sympathetic assenting parental sort of way and then helpfully went back to sleep (again). The next I knew, it was morning and we were able to count beetle corpses by daylight. There were many. So last night we were mostly inventing a new sport of beetledodging, at the Dugana Khad ger camp about 150 miles west of UB, at GPS ref N 47º 25' 31.94", E 103º 43' 23.23", altitude 1,319 metres. 1st AugustMy my, August already! The day started with a bit of surprise from our Mongolian hosts to find one of their guests missing. But that was soon overcome. After breakfast and another shower (you have to make hay while the sun shines!) We loaded up and headed back to the road. This time our packed lunch seemed to be an entire roast chicken dinner. Quite a feat - we had pork last night and chicken for our lunch, an entire 24 hours without mutton! We somehow managed to miss the turn for Karakoram (it was hidden amongst a load of roadside shacks) and because of a slight "disagreement" in the cab about driving styles we were twenty miles down the wrong road before we realised. Ho hum. So we turned round, didn't we? And before long we arrived at Karakoram. We knew we had, because in the middle of a ten thousand square mile field, we saw this big archway over the road announcing we had arrived. There was empty road for miles on either side of it, but you can see someone had blown the entire province's road sign budget for several years with the array of warning signs leading up to it, which started with a "!", and included (amongst other things, like a ludicrously low speed limit) a height restriction warning! You could always just drive round it, of course... Karakoram is a strange place. It was established as the capital of the massive Mongol empire on the orders of Genghis Khan in 1220, though it wasn't really built into anything massive until after his death. It only served as the capital for less than a hundred years - when the Mongols finally completed the conquest of China, Genghis' grandson Kublai Khan (the one Marco Polo met) moved the capital to Beijing. When the Chinese finally managed to throw out the Mongols and go back on the offensive, they managed to destroy Karakoram in the 14th century - the Manchus, apparently. Nothing much happened here for a couple of hundred years and then some Buddhist monks turned up and used the rubble of the old city to build a monastery, the Erdenne Zuu, which was the first Buddhist monastery in Mongolia. It had fluctuating fortunes over the following few hundred years, before the Mongolian Communist Party got hold of it in 1937 as part of their purge of all religion from the country. All the monks were either shot or sent to Siberia, and the place was largely destroyed. It was only in the 1990's that it was reopened as a place of worship, and they have been trying to rebuild some of the fabric and re-establish a community of monks. It is going to be a long job. We will spare you the endless temple photos, but here are a couple of tasters, one external and one internal, to give you the idea. Here is also a photo of some of the young trainee monks, who were wandering round trying to learn sacred texts whilst being photographed by stupid tourists. Not a great learning environment, I'd say. In the meantime, a new town called Kharkhoreen has sprung up next to the monastery. It is not particularly attractive, but it does have a range of services and our mobile phones actually work here. It looks as if the main employment hereabouts is in the large flour factory which stands just outside the town - but it seems a bit odd, as we have not seen any sign of fields of wheat anywhere on our way here. A bit more soviet style central planning, I suspect. We had a good look around the monastery - a huge wall (probably well over a mile long if you walk around it) containing now only a handful of temples (in its heyday, there were over a hundred). We had our brief guided tour in English and then wandered outside the walls to see what we could make out of the ancient city, which was just outside. The answer was "not a lot". Even the Lonely Planet says you will have to "use your imagination" and we speculated about Time Team electronic reconstructions of entire palace complexes from small pieces of pottery... Rich had gone off on a little explore of the environs in the Land Rover (that thing can climb some pretty big hills) while we were "doing "monasteries, and we now hitched up again to find somewhere to stay. After driving around the cluster of ger camps nearby, we picked one, the Riverside (which was just that - a really nice fast-flowing river runs down from the hills out into a plain near here) and settled in. The owner speaks reasonable English and actually offered us a choice of menu for our evening meal. What luxury! They also provided pretty decent hot showers (best water flow since UB) on 45 minutes' notice, so things were looking pretty luxurious. G and I went for a walk up the river after dinner while Rich did whatever he does at such times. On the way, we saw a horse with a swastika (right way round and everything) as its brand - it wouldn't stand still for me, so the photo is a bit blurred. Very odd. We also saw another ger camp up the river a bit which was so luxurious that each ger had its own air conditioning - see?! At last things were starting to cool down a bit after a long hot day. We then went back and tucked up, though G was complaining of feeling a bit dodgy. Hope that goes away, as the plan is to drive the 90 miles or so to Tsetserleg tomorrow over rough roads. My only other concern is that while we were eating our packed lunch by the monastery, I had a good crawl around under the car and noticed that we seem to have made a bit of a mess of the rubber bushes which connect the rear shock absorbers to the chassis - that probably explains some of the nasty clunking and grinding noises coming from underneath the back of the car. We need to fix that before we go too much further, but I'm not sure how urgent it is. Today's odd things - first the bizarre "inscription" on our tea flask at dinner; second, the most evil looking person ever, sharpening his stabbing tool and giving us the devil eyes. Most disturbing. So tonight we have a few things to think about at the Riverside Ger Camp outside Karakoram at GPS ref N 47º 11' 37.25", E 102º 47' 34.12", altitude 1,436 metres. 2nd AugustOh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Geraldine is not very well. No, she is horribly, explosively, double-endedly unwell. She wears a rut in her route to the toilet block overnight (I sleep through it all in a very sympathetic way - well, there's no point us both feeling really awful in the morning, is there?) Can we stay at the Riverside ger camp and its wonderful toilets for another day, please? No, "is not possible" - two tour parties are coming in for tonight and there isn't a spare ger in the place. We are given lots of sympathy, a Mongolian recipe for dicky tummies (take a handful of rice, boil in fresh water for two hours and serve, nestling in a bed of porcelain) and until 3 pm to vacate our ger. So Rich and I go off on a hunt around town to find a hotel with an en suite toilet with limitless capacity. We pass on the "pit toilet" options offered by Lonely Planet, and both the recommended hotels are full (though you could stay in a Mongolian ger in the back yard if we like!) It takes us quite a while to find one of them ("look for the red signs) and G is beginning to worry whether we are coming back. Mobile phones luckily work here, so we are able to reassure her we are still working on her problem. Having exhausted all hotel options, the only other thing we can do is try ger camps. So we go to the big one up the end of the valley and ask if they have two gers near the toilet block for the night. They look at us slightly strangely but are able to come up with the goods. I leave Rich there to make sure the gers don't go and shoot back to Riverside to pick up my precious bundle of groaning wife. After one false start, we make it ok. The 5 minute drive does her in so we drop her on the bed to recover, then wonder what to do. It is a steaming hot day, which doesn't help. And it transpires that they put the old gers by the toilet block for the drivers and interpreters (while the posh guests stay up the other end near the river). If gers have steerage, this is it. The beds are like concrete and G's pillow (which rapidly becomes mine) seems to have been stuffed with a dead sheep. But at least the manageress speaks English, so we can explain our complicated dining arrangements. It's now early afternoon, so Rich and I make ourselves a cheese sandwich out of the back of the Land Rover (with frozen cheese - the fridge seems to be making a special effort on such a hot day). We're such skinflints, we don't want to pay $7 (or whatever it is) for a sit down lunch at the camp. After that, we sat around and sweltered while Gerry groaned (a Mongolian variation on fiddling and burning). I was getting a bit worried that I ought to be doing something about the shock absorbers, so more in hope than expectation I decided to use this dead time by making another little expedition into town to see if I could get anything done. I drove along the main road into town looking for any signs with cars on them, or the magic word "Avto" in cyrillic script. The first place I stopped at were finally persuaded to come and look under the rear of the car of the gesticulating Englishman, but indicated that they only did tyres, why didn't I try a car repair place? My directions consisted of a wave of the arm and a word which, roughly translated, meant "yonder". So I tried a few different yonders and finally saw a tell-tale car ramp in front of a dirty shed. I pulled up outside and found there was a small gang of very hot, oily looking Mongolians, some of them in overalls, trying to hide from the heat (not from me, at least I don't think so). I managed to drag one of them out to inspect the rear suspension on the car and another one followed. There followed a long conversation between them in Mongolian which, I later inferred, went roughly thus: "Ooh, look at that, he's completely b*******d his shock absorber bushes. He needs to get those fixed or his car will shake to bits. We could do that for him, if he wants, but it'll need some parts." "Yes, and what's more we don't keep any spares for that here - in fact, we don't keep any spares at all here, he'll have to go to the car spares shop to buy them, like everyone else does here. Who's going to tell him?" "You can, he doesn't seem to understand the simplest thing I say to him." [Pause for simple explanation to the English idiot.] "No, he hasn't got it, has he - do you think he's simple, or something?" "No, just foreign. I told him he needed to go to the "delgur" and he got his maps out to ask where it was and how many hours it might take him to get there. Why do they do stuff like this, go off to all sorts of places where they can't understand anything they're told?" "Search me, but anyway, how are we going to sort this? Tell you what, why don't you get in his car with him and show him the way to the spares shop - and while you're there, you could even help him buy the parts, then bring him back here and we'll have a crack at fitting them." "Right you are. See you shortly." He then jumped in the car, told me to climb in and drive off, following his vague pointed directions. It took us about two minutes to get to the "container market" in the centre of town (most reasonable size towns have one of those, they are markets where the stalls are just shipping containers which are locked at night for security). He then wandered around about three spare parts places picking at various promising looking bits while his various mates called out things like "who's that gormless looking idiot you've got with you?" and "can't he even find a spare part shop on his own?" Luckily the full embarrassment of all of that was lost on me. We struck gold at the third container. The lady there had a string of rubber bushes of the right size and after a quick inspection my guide said they were the right ones. The total cost for four new ones was just over £1. We drove merrily back to the repair shop with our booty and now the fixing started. The Land Rover workshop manual gives all sorts of instructions like "jack the chassis onto axle stands, remove the wheels etc etc" before you do anything else. That's not how they do things here. He just reached right in with a spanner, undid the fixing nut and pulled the top of the shock absorber off the mounting. He gleefully showed me the mangled remnants of the old rubber bushes which dropped out (here is a picture of one of them - the second one on each side had completely disintegrated). He then fitted the new ones round the mounting point on the chassis and tried to refix the top mounting ring of the shock absorber over them (stop me if this is getting too technical). He ran into a small problem at this point as the car needed to be jacked up slightly to allow him to refix it. He indicated that he needed a jack - I was a bit surprised, I thought that was the sort of kit you would generally have lying around in a garage, but clearly not here. So I got our big farm jack out of the car and that sorted it. There was general amazement at this extraordinary piece of kit that allows you to lift a fully loaded Land Rover a foot off the ground in 30 seconds. They played with it for ages, admiring how cleverly it worked. It took him about 20 minutes to do both sides. He then indicated he had finished and it was time to pay. This is when I normally start to get nervous around garages. But he showed me on a calculator that he wanted the princely sum of 5,000 for solving my problem (guided tour of the container market and spare parts consultancy services included) - which works out about £2.50. I rapidly paid him double that before he changed his mind and drove off smartly. I was waved off by the entire family and their friends and neighbours, who had all come to watch and who all did a wonderful greek chorus sound effect every time something new and miraculous appeared from the innards of this strange vehicle - such as a farm jack or a set of AF spanners. The car bounded silently over all the potholes and bumps on the way back to the ger camp - a blessed relief from the increasingly worrying clankings, clunkings and grindings which had started to accompany our progress over any rough ground (i.e. everywhere in Mongolia). My total repair bill was £6, including a £2.50 tip. Listers Audi eat your heart out! After checking on the patient's progress (none) I decided to take the car for a slightly longer drive to test it out properly. There is a "Great Imperial Map Monument" on a hill overlooking the town which consists of three large mosaic maps about 30 feet tall, standing in a sort of circle. They show the geographical extent of the three major world empires which have been built from this area - the Hunnus (3rd-4th century BC, precursors of the more famous Huns), the Turkics (7th-8th century AD) and the Mongols (13th century). I thought it was worth a drive up the hill to see it, and so it was - with bonus views right up the river valley into the mountains, where there were some spectacular thunder storms brewing. And the other bonus was the car behaving itself perfectly and sounding much happier. In order to retain the cosmic balance, though, the door knob on the driver's door fell out - so I now have a spring poking out the side of the door handle! When I got back to the camp again, it was nearly time for dinner. After admiring how the sun was receding up the hill behind the camp, and saying hello to the new friend Rich had made (the guard dogs are really soppy around here), he and I shared a good meal (real shepherd's pie - or herdsman's bake) while G continued to feel very unwell, but slightly improved as the drugs took hold. We had a minor attack of Beetlemania in our ger, but hopefully not so bad it will stop us sleeping. And the sweltering heat of the day has finally calmed down a bit - though the hairdryer wind continues and we have only just been missed by a number of thunderstorms. So tonight we are mostly clutching our tummies and hoping it's all going to be better in the morning, at the Anar ger camp, near Kharakoram, at GPS ref N 47º 10' 55.85", E 102º 47' 30.13", altitude 1,435 metres - within spitting distance of last night, but hopefully the marginal change of scene will do us good. 3rd AugustWe did not have a great night's sleep. The beetles were not too bad after an initial burst, but the beds were rock hard and the Russians talked very loudly and animatedly into the wee small hours under the influence of goodness knows how much vodka. We returned the favour at 9 am. G felt up to a breakfast of boiled rice, so we tried it and it seemed to go down ok - and, more important, it stayed down. She declared herself fit enough to travel on to Tsetserleg today, as long as we took it gently. So we did. The first thing to do was fill up with fuel, and we found that the beetles here are obviously very attracted to hydrocarbons - it put our small infestation problems into perspective. Then we took it so gently that we (not me) didn't even bother to keep a proper check on the maps, as a result of which we suddenly found after two hours that we had somehow forked off in the wrong direction about an hour previously - so now we were heading rather more towards the People's Republic of China than our intended destination. It was so far to go back that we decided to push on and take the minor trails to get us back on track. We feared we might be in for a bumpy ride (which we really could do without) but in fact it wasn't that bad - we were generally able to keep up a speed of about 20 to 25 mph without too much difficulty. And we were treated to some lovely views of the heart of Mongolia as we drove along a couple of broad river valleys. There were a few gers about, but you really felt you were off the beaten tourist track There were herds of horses everywhere, obviously doing their best to adopt photogenic poses for us; and the views back along any old valley from the pass at the far end were breathtaking. We stopped for lunch, and were impressed by the number of flies and bugs around (especially grasshoppers - but then there's lots of grass to hop around in); so we didn't hang around too long. We drove along one valley beside the river, which we had to cross at one point and a couple of log bridges were out so we had to put the Land Rover to the test - the water didn't quite come up to the doors, so our feet stayed dry. At one point, we saw some really big birds - one of them was pecking at something in a field of yak (it turned out to be a carcass of some baby animal) and the others were circling round to join in. Then the herd of yak turned on the bird which was on the ground and drove it away. In the meantime some kind of large dog nipped in and stole their dinner (or maybe it was his in the first place). The vultures were not best pleased - nature in the raw. Finally, after 7 hours on the road to cover 115 miles (it should only have been about 70!) we rolled into Tsetserleg and booked into the Sunder Hotel for the night - or maybe two (depending on how G feels in the morning after quite a hard day today). They have a bizarre restaurant, which actually has decor (first we've seen outside UB) - mind you, you wouldn't want to spend a whole evening in it, it's rather disturbing - as if a reasonably talented teenage artist with an obsession for fantasy novels has been left to get on with it. And Rich and I enjoyed the luxury of a game of snooker on a 3/4 size table (with quite a lot of slope on it and only 6 red balls, so we had excuses ready made for the poor standard of play). We also saw that they offer a laundry service at 1,000 Togrogs per kg, so we put in a monster pile of dirty washing. At 9 o'clock sharp the hot water came on so we could have a shower - but our shower head didn't work so G had a standing bath under the waist high tap and I managed to coax a bit of a shower out of Rich's bathroom. The perennial beetles have followed us here, but hopefully there won't be too many in a hotel... So tonight we are mostly hoping for a good night's rest in the Sunder Hotel, Tsetserleg (rooms 302 and 304, if you'd like to order us some room service), at GPS ref N 47º 28' 30.75", E 101º 27' 28.60", altitude 1,658 metres. 4th AugustAnother interesting night. The beetles were not so active - only the commando ones can make it up to the second floor of the hotel. Rich still managed to catch about 20 (which he has thoughtfully caged in a cup in his room with a glass ashtray on top so you can see them all milling around trying to dig escape tunnels, etc) and we had a handful (which met a much more summary end). But the big entertainment for the night was the local dog population. They waited until you had just about drifted off to sleep before starting up the most incredible cacophony or barking for about ten minutes. Then they would calm down and you would just start to drift off again when... off they went again. This only stopped around sunrise, when they clearly needed to start their day's rest in readiness for tomorrow night. Breakfast was a bit odd - Rich decided to give it a miss, in exchange for a bit longer in bed and a good meal later. We managed to get G some more boiled rice (gone downhill a bit after eating a small meal last night) and my breakfast consisted of two slices of rather stale bread with butter and a small blob of jam, plus a large beer mug full of sweet lemon tea. Good for my diet, I suppose. We decided to stay here another night (perhaps the dogs will give us a night off as it's Friday) and explore Tsetserleg in between resting up a bit. But in fact we mainly rested up! We wandered around a bit until we felt we could justify an early lunch at the Fairfield Cafe, which is run by a British couple, Mark and Jill Newnham, who have been in Mongolia for 13 years, running a number of businesses and trying to involve the local Mongolians - training them up and getting them to the point where they can run the sort of business which will attract western tourists and therefore create permanent jobs. They have 15 full time employees who they keep on all year round, though if they were being really commercial about it, they would probably lay at least half of them off for the winter months. Jill is from Stourport originally, though she hasn't been back for many years. As well as the cafe, they have started a guesthouse in the last year and they also have a bakery. Best bread we have had for a while! They also proudly announce that they have "the only Espresso machine in Arkhangai province", a claim which we have no reason to doubt. The cappuccino was magnificent, and washed down a really nice lasagne rather well. We decided straightaway to return for dinner! We also learnt that the weather this year had been particularly unusual - far more rain than usual, followed by some really hot weather, which meant that the bugs were particularly numerous this summer. They quite often have something approaching a plague of either moths or beetles, and this year definitely seems to be beetles! We then dropped into the telecom office, where there was a very slow internet connection. We still managed to do a few emails, but it was very ponderous. I wandered off to have a nose around and find a bank that would exchange some Euros for me. I had no luck on the bank - even when I found one that was proudly displaying exchange rates on the wall (including for Euros), they said they didn't actually do currency exchange! I gave up in disgust and decided to nose around the container market instead. I found some more rubber bushes for the suspension and bought a set on spec (not quite sure if they would be the right size, but hey they were only 80p for the set - I was obviously ripped off in Karakoram, where they cost £1!) I also found a nice leather belt for 60p and then thought I should head back to the telecom office to see if G was finished. She was, but we now only had half an hour before we were due back at the Fairfield for dinner (they shut early!) So off we trotted (giving the flaming monastery a miss this time) and enjoyed Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding and other delights for dinner, pausing only to buy a couple more things in the market with G. Then home for an early night, after waiting until 9pm for the showers to come on, of course. We also laid some plans for tomorrow, depending on the state of G's gastro-intestinal tract. We decided that we would definitely have to give the White Lake a miss for now, and the only question is whether we are forced to stay here another night or can do the first leg of the return journey to UB. So tonight we are unmoved from last night's location, mostly hoping that we have done enough to scare off the beetles for tonight! 5th AugustBeetles not too bad last night, and even the dogs seemed to be a bit half-hearted in their nocturnal barking. We even had a bit of a lie in. So we were a bit better rested and G's stomach didn't seem to be in too bad a shape. So we decided on plan A, which was to drive to Ogii Nuur, supposedly a rather beautiful lake which is about half way back to UB. We will find a ger camp there to stay in (or, if we have to, we will camp). The only slightly worrying thing is that the LP guide says the lake is a fantastic spot for migrating birds, fishing and BUGS. Oh well, it was only one night.... We thought we had better call in at the Fairfield for one last blow out, this time chilli con carne for lunch, and a last cappuccino. We also bought a loaf of their wholemeal bread to try out. I managed to get come cash on my visa card at a local bank (Mark had told us about this, but warned that it was a bit unreliable if the UB end of the connection was down for any reason - but in fact it worked fine). Not much to say about the journey, except that it was dirt tracks of varying bumpiness all the way. We went through some more wide open plains, with mountains receding into the distance on all sides. This is a pretty representative shot of the day's driving. We got to the lake at about 6pm (3 hrs 30 mins to do about 75 miles!) and found a really nice small ger camp (called, imaginatively, the Ogiir Nuur ger camp).where we were given a very comfortable four-person ger only about 50 metres from the lakeside. Shortly after we arrived, there was a spectacular thunderstorm across the lake, but the worst of the rain passed us by. It was quite nice watching the lightning stike repeatedly over on the far bank of the lake (about 4 or 5 miles away) from the doorway of our ger while the rain pattered gently on the roof (the felt lining acts as a great sound insulator). The showers were clean, but of the "trickle" variety, so no change there. The odd thing was that in an attempt to make the facilities as comfortable as possible, they had actually put fabric lined covers on all the loo seats - rather weird. After dinner, G and I went for a walk along the gravel spit which stretched about 100 metres out into the lake. The water was very clean and not freezing, and another time we might have gone for a swim (honest!) The storm was over and the sky was almost clear again. There were a lot of mossies (and a few beetles) around the camp, but they didn't seem to be biting. Out on the spit, there was a bug free zone. We enjoyed the calm as the sun went down in a rather spectacular sunset, stages 1, 2 and 3. The view right across the lake as the moon rose was very peaceful - great landscape, almost empty of people. There was a party of German schoolchildren from a Rudolf Steiner school staying at the camp (largely in their own tents). We chatted to a couple of them and watched some fishermen landing some of the local pike. Then we retired to bed to the distant strains of gentle singing of German folk songs (like Greensleeves!?!). So tonight we are to be found mostly enjoying the lakeside air and being pleased by the apparent lack of serious insect life at the Ogii Nuur Ger Camp, on our way back to UB, at GPS ref. 47º 47' 26.56" N, 102º 46' 06.89" E, altitude 1,306 metres. 6th AugustThe English Patient returns! G woke up feeling pretty rough still, but able to make the rest of the journey to UB (about 200 miles, but hopefully with some decent paved road for a good part of the way). So we settled up at the camp, loaded up and headed of east again. Here we are doing the final packing of the van in the rather beautiful weather. Then we spent 7 hours on the road, during which we saw some camels and some fantastic open road (once the road surface turned good, after about 70 miles of humpity bumpity) before we reached UB at around 7 pm. About 7 hours' driving again, but this time for just over 200 miles of progress! The hotels in UB suddenly seemed to have got busy, and we had some difficulty in tracking down some rooms. Eventually all we could get were three single rooms in the Zaluuchuud Hotel, rather less luxurious than we were used to, but still perfectly good. As we drove past Dave's Bar on the way there, we saw a couple of cars parked in front which had clearly completed the rally - an old white Fiesta and a red Fiat Panda. We learnt later that the Panda had won - how must the rest of the competitors feel??? Both cars seemed to be in pretty good condition. Parking was the usual issue, but the hotel managed to arrange a spot for us in a sort of private informal secure car park in someone's hasha (yard/compound) - at the princely price of 1,000 Togrogs a night (50p). It was just round the back of the hotel, so really quite convenient - and it was strange to see a hasha with a ger on it right in the middle of the city. But Rich's main preoccupation was with The Insatiable Stomach, so in a fit of dynamism he was suddenly able to bestir himself to book a table for three at the Hazara Indian Restaurant, and get settled into his room in record time, ready to get out well before there was any danger of the restaurant closing (the memory of missing a curry there on a Sunday night a couple of weeks ago because we were too late was still painfully fresh for him, poor dear). So we found ourselves wolfing down their fantastic Lamb (well, ok, mutton actually) Rogan Josh and Murg Murkhani, with all the trimmings, at around 9 pm. We ordered enough for three and G ate enough for 0.1, so Rich and I went a bit over the top. As we were sitting noisily digesting, who should walk in but Tom from the Mongol Rally, followed a little while later by Steve (who had spent a day at Terelj to unwind) and a couple of friends, including a guy called Will who did the Mongol Rally last year and hasn't quite found his way home again yet. So we chatted with them a bit more and then left them to it as we were pooped and ready for bed. So tonight we are mostly hoping that G isn't going to scoff down ALL our antibiotics before she goes on Wednesday, at the Zaluuchuud Hotel in UB, at GPS ref 47º 55' 28.61" N, 106º 55' 19.38" E, altitude 1,269 metres. |
