The last few days have been a touch bonkers. We realised early last
week that time was going to bite us. Our research before the trip had
us thinking that the roads from Kazakhstan would be poor but
manageable. The reality was that with 700 km to go...the roads didn't
exist. The tail end of last week is now just a blur. Two Days of 'hour
on: hour off' driving shifts got us to the Russian border and through
the country in time to get to the Mongolian border before it closed
for the weekend. Worryingly though we had been hearing rumours from
other ralliers that the race organisers had messed up with the import
paperwork for the cars and that upon arrival, we would be compounded,
unable to go anywhere, whilst the payments were transfered and the
vehicle import docs drawn up.
This all turned out to be the case and we spent Thursday evening in
the Mongolian customs compound with 12 or so other teams. It was not
long before we all accepted our fate. Within an hour, the rugby balls
were out, kites were being flown and the Russian vodka was keeping us
all warm. The temperature the night before had fallen to minus 10
celcius. It was cold when the sun went down but we were spared such
extremes.
The following morning the guards came and selected teams 2 or 3 at a
time to collect their papers before being released. As these cars
left, those of us left behind lined the compuond cheering, waving and
blowing our horns. It was just like the start all those weeks ago.
Our turn came but. It was late and the light was going, so we crossed
our first mountain pass (8500 ft!) and camped up for the night.
We set off late despite being up at sun rise and managed only 130
miles to Khovd. We met an English speaking kazak teacher in the street
who was very helpfully. He came into a cafe with us to help us
translate the menu and we were given some useful Info on Some of the
roads we need to cross ( some bridges are out presumably because of
recent heavy rains).
As has been the case on most of this trip... If you plant a mongol
rally car outside a cafe or gas station for more than 30 minutes it's
not long before other find you. Last night we met some Australians
that I had met earlier In the trip outside Krakow and a Spanish team
who had smashed their car up the day before and were flying out to UB
in a couple off days.
Mongolia is beautiful. So much more so than anything I had ever
expect. Everything I had read and all the photographs I had seen in
the run up to our adventure didn't even scratch the surface.
The car continues to soldier on. We had a bit of a problem with a rear
suspension spring (it snapped!) but some remedial repairs I carried
out whilst stuck at the border seem to be holding up.
It's getting hard to find 3G in Mongolia but keeping checking in for
updates.
