Mongolian Farewells

So we'd crossed the stretch of remote sandy desert that involved sizzling hot temps, sweating out 9 liters of water and pushing our bikes through impractically deep sand. Our reward was a short but sweet stretch of freshly paved tarmac and the promise of cooler mountains ahead. We arrived in Ulangom during their 90th celebration of Nadam (we realized our uncanny gift of arriving in various towns during their Nadam festival as this was our 3rd go-around with the horse, wrestling and archery games). We had no idea what the road conditions were like ahead of us. We tried to pick as many people's brains as possible, talking with a road engineer, some Australian motorcyclists and even calling a tour company in the mountain town that we were heading. Everyone gave wildly different versions of the road ahead; some saying it was mostly paved and would be no problem on bikes, some saying a bridge had failed and we would have to contend with a major river crossing, some even saying that 2 motorcyclists had to turn back the road was so bad. So perhaps more confused about what lie in store for us than when we had arrived, we closely studied the maps for potential water sources and decided to go for it. We launched off into the mountain that border Russia, intending to do a slight semi-circle mountain detour. We enjoyed about 40 miles of smooth pavement before settling back into the typical Mongolian 'roads' that we grew to loave (nope, not a typo). The sand turned into hard packed dirt, turned into a mix of graded dirt and stones that followed mountain drainages, weaknesses and alpine lakes, making the navigation much more straight forward and the views even more rewarding.

The mountains felt good. The temps dropped considerably that night allowing us to finally cozy up in our sleeping bags, a leisure we hadn't enjoyed in nearly 2 weeks. We pushed (no pun intended) passed a few mountain passes before dropping to the base of a large mountains, our third and finaly pass of this mountainous stretch. Luckily we found ourselves at a beautiful mountain stream, which turned out to be a life-saver as the water sources indicated on the map were few and far between. Then came the pass. We cycled for all of about 3 minutes on loose angular stones before giving into our destiny of push bikers (puns all around). The 'road' was more or less straight up a large mountain side of large loose rocks. We pushed, grunted, swore and sweat our way up the mountain. More of a core workout than anything else. I was putting so much stress on my handle bars that my handle bar tape started unwrapping and bunching and my right brake lever folder under the stress. About 3 hours of this brutal core, calf, quad workout delivered us to the summit. We descended the mountain like champions, dropping loads of elevation and delivering us to a coal mining town the size of a grape and the soul of a black lung. We awoke the next morning to ominous clouds and a sore core. We biked for about 2 hours before the storm caught up with us and delivered it's gift of rain mixed with hail mixed with sizeable lightning bolts. The road had turned back into sand which, thanks to the delivery of masses of water, was rapidly transforming into a river beneath us. This made for some exciting cycling, being pelted with hail riding on sand that regularly caved into the newly formed channel. Luckily the storm was short lived and we found ourselves at a beautiful fresh water lake, Achit Nur.

The next morning shortly after caffeination we found ourselves staring at one of the most established cities we'd seen in Mongolia: Olgii. We couldn't figure out how this remote and seemingly disconnected mountain town could have so many tall buildings, amenities and permanent structures (most of the towns up to this point were comprised of houses mixed with yurts). I started noticing a very different architecture from the soviet/mongolian mixed styles from every previous town. Large minarets were scattered throughout the town, the people were noticably different in ethnicities, language and lifestyle, speaking a mix of Kazakh, Mongol and Russian. This was really cool to experience. There was a Turkish restaurant! We enjoyed multiple Adana kebabs and Turkish coffees (anything other than fried dough with mutton). The Kazakh language brought me back to my previous travels through Central Asia. Kazakh is very similar to Uzebek and Turkish, which is widely spoken throughout Central Asia. I re-jogged my memory of numbers and various travel phrases and even bargained on a hotel room using Kazakh numbers.

So after we'd had our fill of minced meat cooked over a grill (still not sure why that's not a thing in Mongolia), we hit the road for Khovd. This was to be another exciting mountain traverse but the road reports all came back positive. We enjoyed another small stretch of fresly paved tarmac before spotting a figure in the distance that resembled a cyclist. As we grew closer, we confirmed out suspicions of a handle bar bag and ortlieb panniers. His name was Volkan, a Turkish cyclist who'd left Istanbul nearly 3.5 months prior. After some introductions and travel banter, we decided to continue cycling together. Volkan was really cool to cycle with, he boiled eggs using dried horse dung, played us some traditional Turkish music, did morning stretching routines and overall brought a really interesting perspective to our dynamic.

The next day cycling as a group of 3, Andrew pointed out a skinny tire track that weaved across the washboards of sand, resembling only what we could infer as a bicycle track. Shortly after this realization, we saw what resembled a slow moving motorcyclist in the distance. As we caught up with this figure, we realized that we had somehow run into another cyclist. He had a fly rod strapped to the back and two large shopping bags dangling from his handle bars. His name was Dragan, a Serbian cyclist who cycled from Serbia on a racing/cross bike with skinny road tires and reportedly carried 60 kilos (130 lbs). By far the heaviest setup I've ever heard of cycle touring and the least practical setup for Mongolia. We chatted for a few moments before deciding to grow our cohesive cycling blob to a group of 4.

We enjoyed some amazing mountain cycling the next day, dropping into a beautiful valley surrounded by tall mountains, glaciers and little to no civilization. The camels seemed a bit out of place with glaciers in the background. Andrew and I decided on a new band name: Camels and Glaciers. We said our farewells to Volkan and Dragan, as they had just entered Mongolia via Russia and were about to embark on the sothern route to Ulaan Batar (where we started nearly 5 weeks earlier). Occasionally I think about Dragan with his gigantic payload and his skinny tires traversing the deep sandy stretches that lie ahead. He's definitely in store for some adventure. So this is where Andrew and I would turn south towards the Chinese border and close the Mongolian chapter of this wild adventure novel. As we turned south and entered our final stretch of Mongolian mountains, we encountered a gigantic Chinese road construction crew embarking on an impressive mission to pave some 400 km from China to Khovd. This resulted in some well deserved cycling on roads that were fresh out of the pavement oven (tires and body give a sigh of relief). We were able to cover some serious ground, regardless of the elevation gain through the mountains. The Chinese road was really nice but already falling apart. I witnessed a few places where bridge crossing were already failing and the road was being washed out (way to go China). It wasn't long after being on pavement and knowing that the Mongolian clock was ticking that I already missed the wildness of Mongolia. 51 days in total. 51 days felt like 2.5 weeks. My body was beginning to adapt to the nonstop jackhammer motions and sandy push biking. We had covered some serious ground in Mongolia, probably seeing more Mongolia than most Mongolians. All of the physical challenges that we'd persevered seemed to dissolve when I realized it was almost over. We arrived at the Chinese border (we did have one last sandy push and a few interesting half-built bridge crossing as a sort of proper Mongolian farewell).

Before we knew it, we were stamped out of Mongolia and into China. This was an exciting and comical experience to say the least; Chinese officials going through all of our bags piece by piece, geting stuck in the Chinese immigration system during their lunch break, which consisted of being fed steamed buns and a brief lesson in Chinese language by two Chinese immigration officers in a room full of Mongolian women and Andrew and I. And like that we were back in China. All of the effort learning Mongolian words and phrases was no longer working in our favor as we were humbled and confused by the Chinese and Uighur language. I'll also foreshadow that we crossed the border with under 400 RMB (about $75) in our possession. I'll elaborate on that in the next post....it's exciting. I'll also point out that I added a link to our route through Mongolia to the blog site. For those of your on the email blog group, you can see this on the blog homepage. I'm also posting this from China...with most everything blocked (Google, facebook, youtube, Twitter, Skype, even Blogger is blocked), which amounts to me doing this tediously over my phone. We obviously overcame our money problems and have spent about a week in Urumqi, China resting, eating amazingly cheap Chinese and Uighur food, and playing tourists. Yesterday we visited the second lowest place on earth, some 500 ft below sea level. It's been really nice to be off the bike but we've just about had our fill of the big city and ready for the next adventure. I'll post when we get to internet again...until then, you know the drill. I can't add comments to the pictures (from my phone) but there's stories behind each one. I'll leave it to your imagination....