|
Diary w/e 13 August
|
|
|
7th AugustIt's Monday morning! The Mongolian 800th anniversary celebrations still seem to be going on most nights in the central square, so we are a bit pleased to be a bit further away from all the noise than when we were here last. I was only intermittently woken up by loud music at around 2-3 am. Rich reported a quiet night's sleep and G was mostly disturbed by the noises in her own room rather than external ones. We decided we liked the place (in spite of the single rooms - a bit like being back at uni) so we thought we'd try to book in for another couple of nights. Alas, they were fully booked for the night! It suddenly seems to have got really busy around here... G was still munching her way through our anitbiotic stock, and now starting to feel guilty about it. So she said she thought we ought to try and buy some more. We also needed to sort out a hotel for her last two nights. So she and I had breakfast (Rich strangely absent - a trend developing here) and managed to find some rooms at the slightly overpriced Epos Hotel (opposite the Edelweiss where we had stayed before, and with its own fenced off parking area in front - indeed the very same parking area we had parked in when we stayed at the Edelweiss). Then we went off in search of drugs. The "nearest pharmacy" (according to the hotel receptionist) was somewhere else when we got there, so we trekked off into the centre of town, where I could swear I had seen a number of "Apteke" shops. After getting the local hippy population all excited by asking repeatedly where we could buy drugs, we eventually found them. Two one week courses of a drug which looked about the same size and colour as the ones G was knocking back for under a fiver - and that's because we went for the expensive ones which the dealer said came from Germany, rather than the cheap Korean option. By now, I needed to get back to the hotel to wake sleeping beauty and check out before noon. So I took a taxi, and tried out my rapidly improving Mongolian on the driver. Yes, the traffic was completely crazy, that was an accident we had just passed, he wasn't married but had four children (not quite sure how that one worked out) and his livestock were indeed fattening nicely (he gave me a bit of a funny look at this point). He was very pleased to get rid of me and took the most direct route possible back to the hotel. I may have discovered a technique here... Rich was actually awake already when I got back, indeed he was fretting about getting out by noon (probably frightened they'd ask him to pay extra if we weren't). So it was the work of a moment to collect the car from the "car park" round the back, fling the bags in and drive off to the Epos, where we were greeted warmly and allowed to check in early. They weren't even sniffy about the state of the car (not quite as bad as when we came back from the Gobi, but bad enough). Then of course it was time to make tracks for the Bistrot Francais (yup, it's still got that irritating extra "t" in its name) so that we could eat lunch (it was now nearly 14 hours since Rich had sworn he would never eat again) and use their WiFi connection to download our website updates. G got there before us (after a bit of souvenir hunting) but it was not until we had ordered our food that we discovered their WiFi was down. Tant pis! We ate a snackette anyway (the English Patient now onto chicken broth and bread) and then Rich went back to the hotel to use their (chargeable!) WiFi instead. After a bit more mooching, trying (and failing) to organise some paragliding, confirming G's flights and generally faffing, we nipped back to the hotel for a quick relax and settle in. Rich in the meantime had been managing to get the Google Earth link with our website working and was very pleased with himself ("I am very very very clever"). Before we knew it, it was time to go and eat again! There's a thing! The chicken broth had stayed down and the Patient declared herself ready for a tougher challenge. So Goulash at the Silk Road Bar and Grill it was (a bit of a misnomer, because unless I'm very much mistaken, the Silk Road never came anywhere near UB - but no matter). All very pleasant, and on the way back to the hotel we had a rather stunning sight of the moon rising over the Choijin Lam monastery. And so to bed. So tonight we are mostly feeling a bit like we are marking time until G's flight on Wednesday first thing. Will she recover enough in time to travel without her own personal sanitation facilities? All will be revealed tomorrow at GPS ref 47º 54' 53.71" N, 106º 55' 41.26" E, altitude unchanged. 8th AugustToday we awake early and determined to see some more sights as well as making final preparations for the Grand Departure. G & I breakfast in splendid isolation (promising signs - she even tried one of their appallingly weak cups of instant coffee). After a bit of packing, we decide to head into town to "do" the Museum of Mongolian History in the morning, followed by the Museum for the Victims of Political Persecution in the afternoon. But it doesn't quite work out like that, does it? On the way into town, G sees a Mongol Rally t-shirt and starts talking to the man inside it. They arrived last night (their battered Nissan Micra is parked up carefully at Dave's Place) and are full of stories of their journey. They came through Ukraine and Kazakhstan, so they took a much more interesting route than the two cars that have arrived already. It sounds like they had much more trouble with the Russian traffic cops than we did - on one occasion, they had to pay a straightforward bribe of £80 just to get their driving licence back off one, when he had simply taken it without any good reason. They also had some fun on the Kazakh border, where the guards played football with them and then warned them not to stop on the road until they were well past the border zone, due to "banditos". Their car had run without a hitch (not bad, considering it cost them £65) apart from its tendency to eat tyres. They really must get the tracking checked at some point, but they solved the problem of the outsize tyres wearing against the wheel arches by the simple expedient of bashing the wheel arches out of the way. Not sure that would have occurred to me. By now it is regrettably too late to do a museum before lunch, so we try a new joint, Chez Bernard, for a snack. G is still on the goulash soup, but now she is living dangerously by mixing it with salad. As soon as we started to think of food, Rich's ESP kicks into gear and he is surprisingly able to ring us and get himself to the same cafe before our order even arrives (mind you, that is no great achievement, considering the speed of service there). He then heads back to refine the website even more (it has now slipped into the "interesting challenge/project" category - or perhaps he just doesn't like museums) while we nip off to get me a very natty haircut (£2.50 for half an hour's attention from one of the top stylists in UB - Why, you may ask?) and then at last get to the Mongolian History museum. It's actually quite good - a class above the stuffed animals museum, with interesting displays of things going right back to the stone age, lots of stuff on the Hun, Uighur and Mongol empires and then a great deal more on the modern history of the country, right up to the 1990's. And lots of English translations. So we could actually understand what we were looking at most of the time. It was great to see some real Mongol armour from the Genghis Khan era, and copies of letters exchanged between that empire and the Popes in Rome. We had arranged to meet up with Eamonn from CNCF for a last drink, so we ambled to the Irish Bar at 8 pm and shared a couple of beers with him. When we were breaking up at around 10 (G's flight is early in the morning) we walked outside and who should we bump into but the World Challenge party that Rich and I had meet here when we first arrived in UB. They were back from their trip up country and were themselves having a last drink before flying off to Beijing tomorrow. Rich decided to stay and hang out with them for a while - he was very happy to bump into English people of his own age. G and I headed back to the hotel for a short night's sleep before getting her to the airport at 6.30 for her flight. We told Rich to make sure he was back in time to come with us in the morning. So no great excitements to report tonight, at the same GPS ref as before. 9th AugustOh dear, oh dear, oh dear. No reply when I called Rich's room to get him up to come to the airport with us. Initially, no reply to his mobile phone either. Reception confirm he has not picked up his room key. Where can he be? Has he fallen down one of the many open manholes in the street on his way home last night? Has he been mugged for the laptop he was carrying? Is he just asleep somewhere random? The last of these is nearest to the truth, it turns out. Eventually he answers his mobile phone. He stayed with the World Challenge party until the wee small hours at the Irish Bar (doing I'm not sure what) and then went back to their guesthouse with them. Had an awesome time. He is not terribly clear as to where he actually is, except that it's "off Peace Avenue" (that's a bit like saying "off the M5" in UB terms). His speech is strangely disjointed - even slurred. He is ordered to be out on Peace Avenue within 10 minutes (it's 6 am and we need to get off to the airport) so he can be a dutiful and affectionate son and wish his mother a good flight, etc. We will not see her again for over a month.... So after loading G's bags in the car, we drive in a random manner along Peace Avenue, attempting to extract meaningful directions by mobile phone from Rich as to where he is. We eventually see a small gang of people at the side of the road - it is his support crew (AKA most of the World Challenge people) who, unlike Rich, realise the importance of him making this rendezvous. One is carrying his shoulder bag for him (with laptop inside, thankfully), another is mysteriously holding a bucket (never found out why) and another is holding an oddly rinsed out wet t-shirt - strange time of day to be doing washing, I thought to myself, until I realised it was Rich's t-shirt and he was bare to the elements from the waist up. Kind of them to be so thoughtful - no doubt wanting him to look his best as he waves his mother off. This incoherent mess is kindly poured into the front seat of the car by the support crew. Rich shows his appreciation by starting something that sounded like it might have turned into an apology if it had not petered out in slumber. He occasionally surprises us during the journey to the airport by suddenly saying something from behind closed eyes, but joined up speech evades him. At the airport, he cheerily waves his mother goodbye and assists extensively in carrying baggage, etc. Bye mum! Hope you had a good flight. I won't do it again. G apparently catches her flight (I spoke to her a couple of times in departures by mobile phone and everything seemed to be going ok). Then I ferry the Zombie back to the hotel. It agrees that it is unlikely to move much further this morning, and I decided it was probably best to stay another night in the hotel so we can recover our composure and buy some "just in case" spares for the car - we seem to be developing slightly spongy brakes again for no obvious reason, and we won't be anywhere near a source of Land Rover spares once we leave UB. And the other major problem we have is a big security issue... I feel like poo, but I had a really good time with the World Challenge lot, so it is all worth it. I think they caught a flight to Beijing today if I remember correctly. Absolute legends the lot of them, and thanks especially to those who looked after me so well! I manage to get details of the local Land Rover distributors and drive over there. I have to wait for the head of the spares department to return from his lunch. He seems to understand the words "brake master cylinder" and things start promisingly as he starts to trawl through his online catalogue. Then he looks as me quizzically and says "ABC?". This cryptic question is pretty hard to decode, so I just have to shrug. Looking sideways on at his computer screen, he does seem to be looking at the right bits, but he is flicking rapidly between about four different screens, not sure why. Eventually he points to two potential parts for me on screen, one of them looks like the part in my car, the other doesn't. So I point at the one that does and nod vigorously. He says "No ABC?" and when I peer at the screen closely, the penny drops. In the cyrillic alphabet, C stands for S - he is asking whether I have ABS brakes or not. Strictly speaking, of course, my brakes are anti-lock (albeit of a primitive variety - when I press the pedal, the wheels don't lock). But this irony is going to be lost on him, so I confirm I do not have ABS and he gleefully starts finding out about the parts I actually want. There is a short tooth-sucking noise, followed by the single word "No". I try to look hopeful - "No, as in you haven't got one, or no as in you just don't want to sell it to me?" Then the ominous reply "not in stock". My heart sinks, experience tells me this means a three week delay and £300 for a £40 part. I am not far out - "Two or three weeks, $356". So I decide spongy brakes are fine - maybe a good bleed of the hydraulics will sort it out, and if it doesn't then we'll just have to drive carefully until we can catch up with a spare master cylinder. Looks like another call to Liveridge. At least the problem isn't likely to cause the brakes to fail totally without warning - they will probably just get spongier and spongier as the cylinder deteriorates. The good news of course is that our route over the next three to four weeks is likely to be the most difficult terrain we have done so far, and the furthest from help if anything major does go wrong. Those horse riding lessons might yet come in useful! We hear from "the countryside" that the heavy rains this year have played havoc with the roads - although the worst of the floods have apparently subsided, there are quite a few bridges and stretches of track washed away, so we are likely to have some real offroad challenges. But our problem is likely to be forward motion rather than stopping! On the way back from the Land Rover dealer, I see this extraordinary sight in the middle of a housing complex. Not quite sure how it got there! As we are not leaving for another day, I have time to walk over to the CNCF office and drop our photos of their village and night clinic off with Eamonn on CD and we chat a bit more. On the way I stop off for a cornish pasty at Dave's Place, and the drivers of the Nissan Micra are there, with Tom from Mongol Rally and the eponymous Dave (who is nursing a hangover to challenge Rich's). The guys reassure me about the master cylinder - if that is the problem, it will probably just get slowly worse, and not fail altogether. They had a similar issue with the Micra all the way here! Couldn't resist this shot of a small shop I walked past on the way home - the cyrillic script translates as "Bootleg CD's" - every town should have a shop like this! Back to the hotel, Rich is now half-sentient. He is in the middle of sorting out the track log etc on the website, which he eventually manages (clever, isn't it?) I doze for an hour or so, then we head out to get him some food before tucking up for an early night at the hotel - lots to do tomorrow! While we are on the road for the next three weeks or so in Mongolia (heading, by a circuitous route via Hovsgol Lake and White Lake out towards the northwest border into Russia) and the few days after that (before we reach Novosibirsk) we are likely to find it hard to update the website. With luck, we will be able to email diary updates (text only) to G at home every now and then and she should be able to put those on for us, together (hopefully) with updates of the overnight stops map. But the track logs are big fat files which need a good internet connection, so we will probably have to stockpile those and download them later. Ditto pictures. But you never know - Mongolia is a funny place... So tonight we are mostly nursing sore heads and gathering our wits for the challenges ahead after the easy time we have been having. GPS ref unchanged. 10th AugustToday we made a determined effort to finish our preparations and leave UB for Hovsgol Lake. One of our main preoccupations was to get the website basically sorted before we disappear out of reach from it for more than three weeks. This turned into a bit of a shaggy dog story because the hotel WiFi had stopped working, the French Bistro's WiFi (where we tried next over lunch) still hadn't been fixed and last of all, we found the previously reliable Irish Bar was also sans wireless. So no web update for us today. While Rich faffed with this, I took the CD with Eamonn's pictures up to him and sorted out the other packing, etc. Even though we left the hotel at noon, it was not until 5 pm that we actually escaped from the UB city limits, pausing only at a small container market of car spare shops on the outskirts. There we managed to buy some more shock absorber bushes (still too big, but hopefully our great whittler will be able to whittle them down to size if we need them), a load of brake fluid (you can't buy dot 4 fluid round here, only dot 3 - hope that doesn't matter!) and a piece of tubing to help us bleed the brakes - what we actually got for this was a piece of old fuel pipe off a scrap engine, for which we paid 25p - the bloke was amazed, the whole engine probably only cost him that much. Then we were back on the open road - well, track, anyway. With only about 3 hours driving before we would need to stop to make camp, we were never going to get very far, but at least we have escaped from the city and tomorrow should be a full day on the road which will get us most of the way to Hovsgol. At around 8 pm we pulled off the road up a broad valley and tucked ourselves largely out of sight in the bed of a dried up stream. The day has been hot and sweaty (as well as dusty of course - a winning combination) and there is not a cloud in the sky, so I have no worries about flash floods in the night sweeping us away. Yummy pasta with tomato sauce for dinner - back on the country rations after the luxury eating in UB. And the mossies this evening are back - but they are not biting and they are polite enough to get the hint from the repellant and mossie coil. Nice to retire into our haven of bug-free space on top of the car, though. So tonight we are mostly getting back into the swing of our camping routine at GPS ref 48º 06' 27.50", E 104º 24' 27.26", altitude 1,091 metres, about 120 miles west of UB. 11th AugustUp reasonably early (9.00) and to our great delight we have not been washed away in a nocturnal flash flood. It was an interesting night, though - very hot but at about 2.30 from out of the blue a really strong wind started up all of a sudden. It was very gusty, but continuous. It felt like a howling gale from inside the flapping tent, but I guess it was actually only about 30-40 mph. It went on for the rest of the night. It was wild enough for us to peg down the flysheet to stop it pulling the rigging poles out, but it also eased the temperature - in fact we had to shut all apertures in order to get any more sleep. The morning was bright and clear, and much less hot than before. It didn't take us long to sort out breakfast, pack away and get on the road. Still a bit worried about the brakes - they seem to be getting spongier and, while we are not losing any fluid, it now takes two pumps of the pedal before you really get full power braking. Oh well, we'll push on to Hovsgol and see how it goes - then if we really do need a new master cylinder we can get it couriered to UB and put onto one of the many tourist buses that go up that way - hopefully! Rich seems to be in a bit of a glum mood - he is still distressingly far away from the comforts of home (the people of home), and he doesn't like it when the car isn't 100%. He drives the car quite punishingly, and seems unable to slow down to give it an easier time - if it isn't going to behave, I'm not just going to let it get away with it. So we decided to stop for some restaurant food in Bulgan for lunch. LP (Lonely Planet) has one entry, supposedly a Chinese restaurant. We decide to give it a go. We get to Bulgan at 2.45 and manage to find the restaurant with a bit of local help. It turns out to be not Chinese at all, just a slightly upmarket Mongolian. No English menu, indeed no English. We order a couple of Cokes to drink while we try to decode it. They take a long time to arrive, then eventually someone walks in with a load of Coke in a shopping bag - they went out specially to get it! This surprised us a bit, as the only other occupied table in the place had been drinking Coke (from the empty tins standing next to the thee empty vodka bottles shared between the four of them!) Anyway, by now we had worked out enough of the menu to order some fried chicken with potatoes - which arrives in a big heap, lumps of fried chicken (at least, I think it was chicken) mixed up with small homemade crinkly chips and a few other things. Actually very tasty, and we were quite hungry. The food bill comes to just under £1 for both of us, but the Cokes put it up to over £2! Obviously a premium drink in these parts. We shoot back to the car and get going (me driving now) and then the fun started. Our spongy brakes are getting spongier and our suspension is starting to make nasty clunky noises again. Things get progressively worse. I get out to inspect the shock absorber bushes and sure enough one of them has all but disappeared and the other one is looking very ropey. So it's out with the spanners and the whittling tools. It takes us nearly an hour to sort out the really bad (i.e. altogether missing) one, and we are quite proud of our efforts. A local herdsman has taken an interest as well and has sat on the ground to watch us (sheltering from the sun behind his horse, who is grateful for the rest). He cadges a bottle of water of us and his mate joins him. They sit chatting while we fiddle around mending. All very sociable. We finally get it sorted (we hope our home-made bushes will stand up to the strain and do the trick) and put everything away again - this time it is Rich who gets his fingers nearly broken by the jack as we lever it back into its narrow space behind the driving seats. Whoopee! The suspension clunking noise has stopped! We stop to have a good look a couple of times, but the dodgy repair work seems to be holding up, in spite of the very rough road. I wish the same could be said of the brakes, though - they seem to be getting spongier and now there is a new feature - in intermittent juddering when they do finally bite. We see a UAZ jeep with obvious problems and pull over to see if we can help. It is a Mongolian driver (sitting on his engine, apparently beating it with a stick in frustration) and two western tourists (perhaps German - didn't find out). They have obviously been there some time, they said there was some kind of fire in the electrics, they don't know whether they will ever get to Hovsgol and indeed they think they might be stuck here forever. The driver's contribution to the conversation is to point at the coil and say "kaput". He indicates that there is a spares place in the village about 25 km down the road where he might be able to get a replacement. We offer them a tow and this seems to galvanise the driver into action. He beats the engine one last time, puts the bonnet down and then has a last go at starting the engine. It fires up (very ropily, but who cares?) and they shoot off quickly before it changes its mind. We follow, at a more leisurely pace, fully expecting to catch up with them a mile or two down the road again and give them a tow. But we never see them again as we have some more loud clunkings coming from underneath and an inspection reveals the other bush has now collapsed. So out with the whittling tools and spanners again, and this time we get the bushes changed in half an hour, with no broken fingers. While we're at it, we decide we might as well call Liveridge about the brakes. We get Chris on the Satphone, and he is bemused by our symptoms. We admit we haven't yet bled the brakes, and he tells us to try that first and ring him back if it doesn't solve the problem. Bleeding the brakes is a bit of a challenge. It's now starting to get dark, the wind has dropped a bit but there is still a lot of dust around, and (it turns out) I have a comically incompetent assistant. The bleed nuts are very tight indeed - I am slightly nervous I am going to break one getting them open (that would really terminally mess things up) but eventually I manage it. Then I go round the brakes in official workshop manual order, with Richard pumping the brake pedal at the appropriate times. It is puzzling, because he keeps reporting no resistance and no difference whether I have the bleed nuts open or closed. Still, a bit of fluid comes out (no great bubbles of air, though) so we seem to have done the job. Then, just as we are packing away, Rich realises he has been pressing the accelerator pedal rather than the brake pedal! What a dumbo! I have never heard you say 'dumbo' before and I hope never to again. I go round the brakes again (getting dustier and dustier from the road) and this time some really significant amounts of fluid come out when he pumps the pedal - but still no air to speak of. We hope this might have magically cured it, and when we start the engine up the first braking goes really well - but as soon as the car has travelled a couple of hundred metres and we try the brakes again, they are just as bad as before. Another call to Chris and he is stumped. He is convinced it is not the master cylinder as we have not lost fluid. He wonders whether it might be a problem with one of the callipers, which sometimes gives the juddering we have noticed. But without looking at it himself he is stuck. We agree to push on and get them expertly looked at as soon as we can. In the meantime, we'll just pump them a lot. By now it is completely dark, so we just pull off the road somewhere and pop the tent up. No dinner (but then we ate well enough at lunchtime) and let's hope for a better day tomorrow. And it's very cold! At least that means Rich isn't going to be bothered by any bugs... The bizarre thing, though, is that we seem to have found some civilisation - when the engine went off and silence descended, we could just make out the sound of distant Mongolian music. There must be some gers nearby. We'll probably find in the morning that we're parked in someone's back yard. We have covered only about 160 miles today due to our various delays, and the tracks are getting worse - it's hard to keep up more than 25 mph on average (especially with our brakes and suspension), so we are going to need to drive for longer each day to cover the miles we need to. Still 140 miles as the crow flies to Hovsgol (more like 200 miles by road). So tonight we are shivering and beginning to suffer from brake fixation, all at GPS ref N 49º 22' 18.12", E 102º 53' 05.94", altitude 864.9 metres. 12th AugustThe day dawns very bright and clear, and delightfully fresh. We got away pretty late because I didn't seem to want to wake up, but then I had some Cheerios and half frozen UHT milk and everything seemed a bit easier. We drove until about 2pm when we stopped at some unnamed village for lunch. We pulled up outside a building which I had seen tables and chairs inside, and hoped it was a cafe, which luckily it proved to be. 'Tsuvan, two, big' was ordered from the woman at the counter, and after a bit more nodding and gesturing, we got a nod in return and sat down with some orange juice from the fridge ('made in Mongolia') and watched dodgy Mongolian music videos (also made in Mongolia. It's pretty easy to tell what has been made in Mongolia, because it is always just a bit weird). Two huge plates of egg noodles and mutton arrived (surprisingly as expected) and we ate until we were almost sick. Apparently we couldn't quite handle 'big'. After lunch, there was more driving, and dodgy navigating. Some squeaking from somewhere below was really starting to get to us, so with our powerful powers of deduction, we worked out that it was the universal joints that needed some grease. After me greasing the things, we got back in the car, pretty proud of ourselves and listened to the squeaking continue despite half a tub of grease, so we carried on until we found a decent space to camp in the hills just before Moron. Dad made some tea, which tasted like dill, we ate some sandwiches, and then dad ran away. I have absolutely no idea where he is, perhaps he'll turn up tonight some time? He has probably found some herdsmen and is busy drinking all their vodka until he collapses. Silly fool. Tonight I am mostly sitting on a hill getting ready to lock dad outside if he doesn't come back at GPS N 49º 38' 1.15", E 100º 20' 10.39", altitude 1,575 metres. 13th AugustInteresting edited highlights of yesterday from Rich. I was of course enticed up the hillside by the sunset, trying to take a good shot of the car parked up in splendid isolation. Then the top of the hill looked close so I went up, then the top of the bigger hill next door looked close, so..... you get the idea. I ended up about a couple of miles away and about a thousand feet above the car, on the highest top around. It was fantastic, with great views all around, including the city (?) of Moron, where the Moronese (or the Morons?) live. Really beautiful country, with ridge after ridge of mountains receding into the blue distance. A few gers here and there, but lots of empty space where we were - about 6 or 7 miles short of Moron, to the south. And trees - lots of them - over the slopes. The tracks are getting worse, and the average driving speed is dropping. Rich also seems to have got the idea about making the car last long enough to get him home, so he has been driving much less aggressively. This is all good, we now accept that we are probably only going to be able to cover 150 miles a day maximum, probably less once we get past Hovsgol, where the main tourist routes end. Only one little event during the day, when Rich was bombing along a really sandy stretch quite quickly. Part of the skill is not to drive in the ruts but with one wheel on the central bump and one on the edge of the track - it makes the ride much smoother. But you have to be very accurate, otherwise you slip back down into the ruts. And if you are on sand, you have to be very accurate indeed, as it is so slippy anyway. Rich was going a bit fast and got the rear wheels a couple of inches too near the ruts, so they slid gently down into them, turning the car rapidly in the other direction. For a couple of seconds we were travelling sideways at 30 mph, at which point I admit I swore. Then the side wheels (which were now the front wheels, but pointing at 90 degrees to the direction of travel) dug in and the bottom of the car therefore decelerated rapidly. Unfortunately, the top didn't, with the result that we teetered precariously on two wheels for a very long second before the car decided to land back on all four wheels rather than its side. In some way which I still don't understand, this was all apparently my fault - or at least, not Rich's. Oh well, at least we have discovered a new method of rapid braking to replace our ever spongier brakes... That was the missing bits of yesterday, now for today's events... Altogether an eventful day. First we enjoyed our rather splendid campsite for a bit. We watched the eagles catching the first thermals of the day and soaring up above the mountain tops and around the valleys looking for their first meal of the day. We then headed into Moron, determined to do what we could to get our brakes sorted. We filled up with diesel on the edge of town and then pulled over at the first garagy looking place we saw. There were quite a few cars (mostly Russian UAZ jeeps) in various states of dismantlement, and some serious looking blokes in proper overalls - this was clearly a main repair depot. We managed to explain roughly what the problem was - the flaming brakes again. But they were too busy or something and before long another mechanic appeared from round the corner who led us off to his garage. We spent a good three hours there while they bled the brakes (several times, and rather messily if you ask me) and then fiddled with a few other bits of the braking system, all without making any difference at all. Every time they did something, we went for a little round the block test drive but everything was exactly the same each time. Finally, they came to the conclusion that it must be the servo so they were all set to start taking that off and dismantling it, when we explained that it was a sealed unit that couldn't be mended if it was broken. But we poured oil around the seam on the servo while the engine was running and there was no evidence of any leak. So in the end we all agreed that our problem was a "mystery" and we gave it up. They didn't want any money (after all, they hadn't been able to fix the problem) but we forced 10,000 Togrogs on them before retiring to the cafe next door (run by the wife) where we had some very good Tsuivan (fast becoming Rich's favourite). As usual, the whole family and friends and neighbours had turned out to watch proceedings on the Land Rover, and the youngest daughter (about 6 years old) was playing pee-bo with me through the windows of the Land Rover while they were trying to repair it. They were a bit sketchy on safety precautions - when the car was jacked up and a wheel taken off, they happily worked under the wheel arch even though the car was only prevented from rolling forwards off the jack by a couple of lumps of wood wedged under the front wheels. We were now impatient to get to Hovsgol, so we headed out of town, pausing only at the container market in the centre, where we bought two complete sets of shock absorber bushes (the wrong size, of course, but good whittling fodder), which we will inevitably need soon. The drive to Hovsgol was pretty uneventful. We picked up a hitch hiker (he was quite happy to perch on the luggage in the back as we bounced along) and had a slightly weird experience when we arrived at the road barrier which marked the entrance to the National Park. There was a car parked in front of us right next to the barrier, and a load of passengers from it, generally milling about. One of t hem spoke some English (he said he was the chief engineer from a factory in Moron) and he said the delay was because it was necessary to pay to get past the barrier and into the National Park. That didn't seem to make a lot of sense - why hadn't they just paid, then? There seemed to be more to this delay than that, and four or five other cars piled up behind us in a queue. The chief park officer was seated at a very important looking desk in the open by the barrier, and there was walkie talkie traffic between his number two and someone else - which all made it seem there was some big problem ahead which had to be cleared before anyone could be let in. And the occupants of all the cars were just standing around waiting patiently, as Mongolians do. Rich got a bit bored with this, and asked the engineer chappy what the delay was. Getting no rational answer apart from the payment one, he then walked over to the desk, paid them the official entrance fee and we were waved past the car in front as they lifted the barrier for us. We never did quite work out what this was all about - we can only surmise that the other car didn't have any money to pay the entrance fee (which was only 15p for Mongolians). We got to the village of Khatgal, at the southern end of Hovsgol Lake, at about 7 pm. We drove around a bit to get our bearings. We were looking for somewhere good to camp for the night, but couldn't find anywhere obvious. We decided to cross the river and head up the Eastern shore of the lake and try our luck there. We drove quite a few miles along a fairly poor track without finding anywhere which satisfied our rather testing criteria - lakeside location, flat ground, nobody else around, no insects. And it seemed to be getting wilder and we could see from the map that we would not be rejoining the lakeshore for quite a while, so we decided to turn back. Rich then took over the driving and decided to head off the road directly towards an interesting-looking lakeside development that might have been the one we were half looking for. Unfortunately this involved driving across some boggy ground, and Rich decided to plough on through, though it was getting wetter and wetter. Then he stalled the car in a particularly boggy spot and before we knew it we were well and truly stuck - bogged down, in fact. The car slowly sank into the bog until it was resting on the chassis with the wheels well and truly buried in wet mud, well above the axles. This was not good. I was too cross to take any photos. We reviewed our options. I decided that we were less likely to escape from the mess if I actually strangled Rich, so I didn't. All we could do was get out all our recovery gear and start trying to winch ourselves out. At least the ground was quite flat, but the main problem was that there was very little firm ground to hammer in our ground anchors to attach our winch to. To cut a long story short, after trying absolutely everything, we managed to get ourselves out of the bog with our very last throw of the dice. A couple of young Mongolian lads had turned up on their horses to join in the fun, and they were actually quite useful in helping us unload the car (to lighten it), watch the ground anchors (which kept on pulling out of the wet ground under the strain of winching) and generally fetch, carry and dig for us. By the time we were out and reloaded, it was well and truly dark. We gave the lads 10,000 Togrogs to share for their help (apparently that's about 2 days' wages around here) and they were very happy. We then drove off back towards Khatgal, determined to pull over and put up our tent at the first flat spot we came to. Unfortunately, before we reached that spot, we hit another big muddy boggy stretch in the road. We didn't see it until it was too late because it was pitch dark. So we got well and truly stuck again, didn't we?? So for the second time in three hours we had to unpack all the recovery gear and winch ourselves out of a mess. And this time, instead of a nice clean bog, it was a great muddy morass. Simply getting out of the car got you muddy half way up to your knees, and by the time we finished, we were absolutely filthy and very tired. Our shoes were unrecognisable, and we had thick mud right up to our knees. This time I did manage a few photos. We found that there was solid flat ground about a quarter of a mile off the road down the hill, so we simply pulled down there, put the tent up and crashed into bed at 1.30 in the morning. As we took the cover off the tent, I realised it was covered in frost - autumn is coming here already, though the day had been hot and sunny. So tonight we are mostly reviewing our double mudbath in the freezing cold - and we still don't have properly working brakes, nor are we likely to have any time soon. All at GPS N 50º 25' 6.45", E 100º 10' 41.99", altitude 1,627 metres. |
