Kyrgyzstan 6 years later

I've been trying to write more. To keep the time between experiences and recording those experiences fresh, to put pen to paper shortly after thoughts and emotions make their way to the surface. It's helpful that I ran out of reading materials so instead of reaching for a book, I've been writing. So in an attempt to deliver a genuine recount of the past 2 - 4 weeks, I'm compiling this post from snipets of writings from the past 3ish weeks taken from any and everywhere; huckered up in my tent during a freak hail storm, my sleeping bag shortly before breakfast, the side of the road, in a random car while hitch-hiking. Hope you enjoy.

August 19: We have finally arrived in Kyrgyzstan. This place has such a warm welcoming feel to it, just as I remembered. The farmers all shout friendly greetings, wave and deliver some of the warmest smiles I've encountered on this trip. The mountains impressively snow-capped at over 6 and 7,000 meters (some higher than any mountains in North America). The fertile valley of Karkara is laiden with ripe fruit trees, vegetable gardens and easy-going, friendly faces. Today we encountered a woman selling honey on the side of the road. She spoke to us in an extremely gentle manner (in Russian) reminding me of my mother's gentle spirit. We bought 1.5 kg of fresh honey from her, as she offered the gentle phrase 'organic product' with a warm smile. Even at the border the Kazakh guards made me unpack my larger bag and the cue for getting a stamp out of Kazakhstan was slightly stressful and uptight. The Kyrgyz guard was listening to pop-dance music, he stamped my passport then offered a kind 'Welcome to Kyrgyzstan'. I'm reminded of why I felt compelled to return to this amazing place.

Friendly faces in Karkara Valley

Picture perfect camping by the river

So we decided to embark on one last mountain adventure before Andrew's time had come to an end. We spent a day or so picking people's brains in Karakol on the most appropriate adventure for the occasion. Karakol is located on Lake Issy-Kul, the 10th largest lake in the world (by volume) and the 2nd largest saline lake in the world (next to the Caspian Sea). I had visited the south-western shore of Issy-Kul on my last trip but the south-eastern shore offers much more scenic views of the proud mountains that this county has to offer. We ended up spending a few days at one of the best hostels I've ever encountered (the best shower I've had since Beijing and friendly owners eager to strike up conversations) to which we randomly stumbled across. We plotted a two-week traverse of some fairly ambitious mountains and tall passes and waited for our weather window (there was quite a lot of rain up to this point and much more forecasted for the future....meaning snow above 3,000 meters). We soaked up some English speaking with loads of friendly tourists and even met a German cyclists who informed me that he'd read my blog in preparation for his trip (I didn't think anyone actually read my blog).

So off we went...cycling along the southern shore of Issy-Kul until reaching the town of Tosor. The ominous Tosor Pass, weighing in at 3,900 meters high, was to be our challenge. Adding to this challenge was the forecast of a winter storm coming the next day, delivering shivering temps and snow above 3,000 meters. We were currently at 1,600 meters; meaning we'd have to climb some 2,300 meters in a day (7,500 ft of elevation gain). Looking back on my previous cycle logs, I'd never attempted this much climbing in a day. And the thought of being stuck at nearly 13,000 ft ill-equiped for a winter storm was slightly un-nerving. But we found ourselves with no shortage of confidence or ambition after Mongolia so up the never-ending hill we charged....for nearly 8 hrs. We only had 30 km to log (less than 20 miles) but it was a long, painful slog straight uphill. We ran into a group of 16 Dutch trekkers about half-way through the climb that waved us over and offered us lunch and tea (they were on on a guided trek). It was a welcomed break from the monotony of hill climbing but once I got back on the bike, my legs didn't want to go. Something like a stubborn donkey or a ceased engine. There was actually a moment when I envisioned myself sleeping half-way up the pass and weathering the storm. But once I broke through the donkey legs (or perhaps the Snickers were oil for my leg pistons), my legs turned into jello and I knew I could continue for some time....I just couldn't stop again. We finally crested the pass around 6:30 pm (it's dark around 8 pm) and quickly threw on some warmer clothes before attempting to drop as much elevation before the sunlight passed and the winter storm waltzed into the mountain range. The road was in poor condition on both sides, which meant pushing up steep inclines of loose rock on the way up and walking down steep, loose slopes of stone on the way down. It was slow going....slower than we'd hoped for. As the sun disappeared, we found ourselves setting up our tents at around 3,400 meters (11,000 ft) and hoping for the best.

Dropping down Tosor Ashuu (Pass) as the night slowly creeps in

We more or less landed on the best case scenario. The clouds slowly drifted in and socked in the valley, providing extra warmth and insulation. The precipitation waited until the morning to deliver it's first hail/snow/rain drops, to which Andrew and I hulled up in one tent and read. There was a small break from the frozen precip around noon and the sun made a brief appearance, prompting us to pack up the tent and bomb down the mountain in hopes of warmer temps and more stable weather at lower elevations. We made some fairly significant progress dropping some 300 meters within the first few hours. Things were looking promising. Then came the first stream crossing. And the second. We were able to navigate these without getting terribly wet. Then came the third and the fourth. These were fairly significant river crossings requiring some scouting of lines and changing into sandals to keep the shoes dry.

Andrew navigating one of the more significant river crossings

We gradually dropped out of the scenic mountainous valley after climbing one more large mountain pass and eventually landed in the big city of Sari-Bulak. I had visited this town on my previous trip and it was exactly as I had remembered: one cafe, one guy selling petrol from a bucket and a bunch of taxis waiting for more people. We enjoyed beefsteaks, multiple cups of chai, baskets of nan and even a smoked fish from the nearby alpine lake Issy-Kol. The total bill was under $6. We then spent a day and a half in Kochkor keeping a close eye on the weather and restocking food for the next leg of the mountain traverse.  

September 2: I'm writing this from the comfort of my sleeping bag. The frosty, frozen dew is thawing with the morning sun and dripping from my rain fly.  The nights have been getting cold. I'm wearing almost every piece of clothing that I brought on this trip to bed and still hovering near the line of comfort and cold through the night. The MSR stove is roaring just outside my tent, slowly warming the icy water in preparation for coffee. The Kyrgyzstan leg of this trip has been amazing. I can't tell if we've lucked out with dodging the nasty weather that has narrowly missed our path or if the nasty weather itself has been unlucky. The seasons are definitely changing here, the clouds dissolve to reveal a fresh powder coating, which makes the mountainous contrast even more beautiful. The cars are few and far between. Two days ago, we only saw 1 car (albeit he passed us 3 times). This was an amazing day for us. We literally raced through 2 ominous weather threats, somehow threading the needle into the one small patch of blue sky within sight. We summited Karakol Ashuu (Pass) at 3,500 meters and were literally chased down the mountain by a front of winter weather at our heels. I tried to rush across a stream crossing and ended up getting my feet soaking wet in freezing cold water. I went to change into my sandals and realized I had lost one of my sandals somewhere on the rocky descent. So with the storm literally hovering overhead, providing a taste of what was to come if we waited another 5 minutes, I quickly changed into my warmest socks, put the one sandal on my foot and headed down the hill (the other foot was just a sock). I can't say this was exactly my proudest moment, but at the time it felt better than putting my foot back into that nearly frozen soaking wet shoe. I tried to pedal with my heel as the frozen water had made my foot mostly numb. We were luckily able to drop another 200 - 300 meters before setting up our tents. When we looked back at the pass, it was completely socked in with a nasty wintery snow storm.
[It took me nearly 2 hours to bring my feet back to feeling.]

Approaching Karakol Ashuu (Pre-frozen foot)

September 3: We are nearing Bishkek. I am extremely excited to reunite with the Kyrgyz family that I met some 6 years ago and shared such a strong connection. I'm excited to see their new house and meet the husbands and babies that have immersed since I was there last. Andrew is preparing to fly out in less than 2 weeks. I'm grateful for his presence on this trip. We took this idea from a mere concept to a reality in less than 6 weeks. We've been on the road for nearly 3 months now, crossing 4 countries and nearing 2,500 miles. We've been through a lot together; navigating the never-ending hurdles that arise when traveling through foreign lands without speaking the language (especially on push-bikes).

We obviously arrived in Bishkek since writing this and reconnected with the Kyrgyz family, the Sultanovas. They are possibly the most amazingly kind and genuinely happy people on this Earth (next to my family of course), contagiously passing along smiles and laughter. They have welcomed us with open arms and treated us like their own family. We've spent the past week enjoying a life quite contrary to the dirt-bagging sleeping in tents smelly cycling life that we've lived the past 3 months. We've experienced Kyrgyz ballets and theatres, sushi, pizza and beer dinners, real coffee, ice cream, movies, outdoor family style dinners with traditional Kyrgyz foods and farewell toasts to Andrew and Ilona (the eldest daughter who lives in Geneva). It's been an amazing cap to an amazing trip. I'll try to write another post to bring everything together but I wanted to take a moment to give a proper farewell to Andrew as I saw him off on a plane to India yesterday. Farewell to a good loyal companion. It's been a wild wild ride.  

The Sultanovas

This family invited us to their summer home for Chai. Great experience!

Nearing Karakol Ashuu

Classy bunch near Sari-Bulak

11 year old sheppard with style

Love this country

China

And so the China adventure begins....rather abruptly. Up to this point, everything was written in Cyrillic, which is at least phoenetic. The humbling and extremely confusing world of Chinese and Uighur language reduced me back to baby-like hand gestures. The Chinese have a rather convenient way of counting to 10 on one hand (surf's up = 6, handgun = 7, pirate hook with index finger = 9), which makes understanding numbers much easier. We had luckily held onto some Chinese money from our previous time in Beijing (around $75), which turned out to be crucial. I'd read on a few travel blogs that the Chinese border town was surprisingly large, with a few proper hotels, supermarkets and restaurants. So I expected to encounter an ATM or at least a bank that would exchange US dollars....which was quickly laid to rest by the hotel proprietor, reminding me of the quirks of traveling in China. Even extremely small towns in Mongolia had ATM's while even some of the bigger cities in China don't have ATM's for foreign cards, nor are the banks interested in exchanging US dollars. So we were about 600 km from the provinvial capital of the largest province in China: Urumqi. Andrew and I decided to stay in our first proper hotel of the entire trip, with a bathroom, shower and wifi in the room!.....then I was reminded of the quirks of Chinese internet (Blogger, Facebook, Google, Skype, pretty much everything that you'd want to use on the internet was blocked), which didn't really matter at the time.  We washed the layers of dust from our skin (which we thought was a sun tan) and enjoyed our first proper noodle dish (Lag Mien) since leaving Beijing some 6 weeks prior. We launched off the next morning towards Urumqi.  

We made good progress on pavement. 150 km (90ish miles) easy in one day, weaving through rolling hills and eventually dropping into the flat desert stretch that remained between us and the big city. Then came the oppresive heat. 42 C (107 F). Living in Alaska for 5 years has made me soft to this sort of heat....especially exercising in this sort of heat. So Andrew and I made the easy decision to stick out a thumb (metaphorical thumbs....Asian hitch hilking is more like waving a fire with an imaginary piece of cardboard). We sat on the side of the road, sweating, trying to find a truck or SUV heading in the same direction. We successfully flagged a few cars and truck, all of which spoke/yelled at us in Chinese and eventually drove away. One car we flagged rolled down their windows, handed us half a watermellon and drove away. Then we flagged a large bus, which stopped and waved us aboard. We loaded our bikes and found seats on a nice air conditioned bus. After about 10 minutes, a guy aproached us asking for money (at this point we were down to less than $30). We were hoping to hitch hike, maybe sharing our half watermelon with a truck driver. Instead, we found ourselves sitting on a bus that we couldn't pay for (watermelon in our laps).....to which we pulled out our remaining Chinese money and showed that we didn't have enough. We speculated being thrown off at the next stop. We went through multiple iterations of trying to make the hand gesture that we were good for it. We could hit the next ATM....or maybe pay using a credit card? The Chinese guy just looked at us with an extremely confused look (fairly typical for us in China). Andrew even pulled out a crisp 100 dollar bill, to which the guy was completely unimpressed. Somehow I finally got through to the guy using a mime of using an ATM and pulling out money in Urumqi. The guy gave a satisfactory nod of the head, and we continued to speculate being thrown off at the next stop, and every stop until we got close to the city. We were beat tired and passed shortly after we didn't get thrown off at the first few stops (watermelon dripping in our laps) and finally arrived in the big city towards sunset. I sat on the bus while Andrew ran around the bus station, hitting 3 ATM's before finally finding one that accepted foreign cards. We had arrived at the biggest city of the entire trip (3+ million people).

Big City of Urumqi

We met Igor, a self described Russian/Texan, in Mongolia who actually lives in Urumqi. He connected us with his friend, Caleb, who was gratious enough to put us up. We enjoyed some well needed time off the bikes. We realized the Chinese symbol for noodle (mien) in Chinese and explored the city pointing at various noodle dishes on menus (having no idea what we ordered but pleasantly surprised when they brought out some conglomeration of noodles, vegetables, unidentified seafoods and meats). It was quite the change from the remote steppes of Mongolia, eating gelatto and passing KFC's and Pizza Huts, but a plesant change nonetheless. We met a group of Cameroonians living in Urumqi that single handledly convinced us to travel to Cameroon as soon as possible.

We took a day trip to Turpan, the second lowest place in the world (500ish ft below seat level) and one of the best preserved ancient cities in the world. Turpan is a desert oasis, one of the marvels of the ancient Silk Road trading routes, hydrated by ground water giving way to acres of vineyars, watermelon patches and trees in a seemingly uninhabitable desert nothing. An antrepologist wonderland, with the salty environment preserving tombs from BC and the largest minaret in China (constructed in 1777). An amazingly fertile desert oasis with a rich history.    

Emin Minaret, constructed in 1777, the largest in China. 

Modern Mosque in Turpan

So we decided to skip the desert oven and take a bus across the border to Kazakhstan; the 9th largest country in the world, the site of the first successful space launch and home of Borat. Kazakhstan has an interesting  visa policy. They allow 15 days visa free, with the exception that anyone traveling overland must register withing 5 days of arriving in the country. Registration can only be completed in big cities, with the fine of $100 per day for each day that you don't register. So we are racing to get out of the country in 5 days. The bus ride and border crossing into Kazakhstan were complete junk shows, full of bribes, confusion, little-to-no sleep, asian's pushing their way through cues and the redeeming smiling faces. We have to make it to the border of Kyrgyzstan before the end of day 5, which is never music to a cyclist's ears. Luckily we are poised for the challenge and the promise of mountains and sleeping in tents makes the carrot seem that much closer to this horse's mouth. We should be in Kyrgyzstan in the next 2 days.....barring any proper push biking. Wish us luck.

Uighur district in Urumqi

This is Volkan, the Turkish cyclist from the previous post. Really cool guy.

What a humbling language

Emin Minaret in background

         

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....

              

Videos and Photos

So I wanted to do a quick post of some videos and photos to supplement my last post. I finally found some decent internet and didn't want to overload that last post. A quick update: We escaped the desert (for now) and found some really big mountains, which means we pushed our bikes up some large mountains. This has easily been the scenic highlight of this trip thus far. We leave today for another 4 day mountain traversing adventure. Hope you enjoy! 

Unexpected camel encounter

Windy but stoked

Major Mongolian highway intersection 

Goat Nostrils

That little dot in the shade is Andrew doing some serious push biking. We didn't even try to cycle this gigantic steep mountain of loose stones 

These guys were awesome (see next photo)

Nomads with Lenovo tablet phones in their pockets

Classy Gents

Not sure how this happened. The archer from the previous post drove us to this tree that somehow embedded a goat horn.  

Andrew topping out after a hard day of riding

Here and now

Push bikes

First of all, I'd like to note that I've added a link to the right column (literally just to the right of this text) labeled 'Where in the world are we?'. You can click this link and produce a map of our current location. A big thanks to Andrew for making this possible with his SPOT device that tracks our daily progress. Please let me know if this doesn't work for some reason.

I'll start with a token moment from when we arrived at Lake Khovsgol, a massive lake in north central Mongolia that borders Russia and contains 70% of Mongolia's freshwater. We struck up a conversation with Danielle, an Australian traveler, who asked us what we were up to in Mongolia. We told her we were traveling by bike across Mongolia. We kept conversing with her about her travels until she asked where our bikes were parked. We pointed to a nearby fence where our bikes were locked up and she said 'oh....you're traveling by pushbikes?!'. Andrew and I kind of laughed at this notion, our ears never having been graced with this word 'push-bike' before. This gave way to a ridiculous onslaught of jokes between the loads (heaps as she would say) of English speaking tourists that were staying in the guesthouse. 'Pushing' our way across Mongolia (instead of cycling across Mongolia) became the running joke. A New Zealander showed up later that afternoon and declared 'oh, you're on pushies', which led to even more ridiculous push bike banter. Well....perhaps the Aussies and the Kiwis were privy to what was in store for us in the days to come. The joke and subsequent literal translation were apparently on us as we left this major tourist destination, having being spoiled with freshly paved roads for the past 600ish miles.

Andrew dropping into Lake Khovsgol after a 4 hour time travel bush whacking adventure 

   It had been raining like crazy, nearing flood status for the past 4 days, making us wonder if we would ever escape this vortex where we spent nearly 7 days making wonderful friends, sharing stories from the road and having late night Bohemian Rhapsody dance parties. There was a short reprieve from the days of socked in clouds and pouring rain, so Andrew and I made a break for it. We packed up our bags (somewhat soggy) and made it about 100 yards from the guesthouse to buy water and food for the upcoming wet ride, when we were approached by an extremely nice Mongolian guy who asked if we needed any help with anything (not an uncommon encounter in Mongolia). He offered to give us a ride back to the main town (only 60 miles away) and we graciously accepted his offer to avoid the highly dreaded wet cycle ahead (and we had already cycled the road a week earlier).

The next morning we awoke with the optimism of the first dry day in nearly 5 days. We stocked up on a few days worth of food and launched into the countryside. Again, we only made it about 5 miles out of town before running into two Americans packing their Ford Excursion near a river (not an everyday encounter in Mongolia). They were mining/mineral consultants living and working in Ulaan Batar on an extended fishing, scouting, prospecting road trip. We began picking through the wealth of information that they possessed on road conditions, sights to see, potential routes, towns along the way, etc. that they gained through their 10ish years living and traveling in Mongolia. They were drinking lemon water, offered us fresh fruits and vegetables, and eventually pointed to the roof rack and the two spacious empty seats in the back of their Excursion. Within minutes, Andrew and I were sitting in the back of an Excursion, bikes strapped to the roof, listening to classic rock and learning about Mongolian geology. These guys were a hoot....an absolute pleasure to road trip through Mongolia with. They had a large supply from the Mongolia Costco equivalent and by far the highest quality maps I've ever seen of Mongolia. The Mongolian hospitality has obviously worn off on these guys; as they fed us smoked fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, gave us their amazing map set, bought us a hotel room, cooked us a rack of lamb, and wouldn't let us leave without taking as much of their food supply as we could carry (steel cut oats, granola, oysters, apples....all organic). And these guys were complete characters. They really took us under their wing and treated us like their own. We are so grateful that we ran into these guys and decided to jump in their car. They ended up hauling us about 120 miles and gave us our first taste of the nasty washboard roads, tricky navigation, little to no traffic, and minimal civilization in between towns....the feeling of truly being in the middle of nowhere. I'm grateful that we could get our first taste from the comforts of an American gas guzzler and some Talking Heads on the stereo.

Andrew, Dave, Frank and I

Loaded with generous rations of Kirkland brand organic foods and high quality maps, we embarked into the great unknown; the Mongolian boonies, on what was to be one of the slowest, painful, remote and frustrating 5 days of my cycle touring career. The first few days were slow going but manageable, towns were conveniently spaced every 40 - 60 miles, the 'road' (somehow a major Mongolian highway) consisted of sections of hard packed dirt, intermittent sand, and lots of washboard sections. Navigation was interesting; 'roads' (I hesitate to call them roads) were unmarked and the occasional intersection/bisection with another 'road' required some help from the GPS. Every 'road' that we followed had about 4 - 6 different 'lane' options running somewhat parallel to each other, making it apparent that these 'roads' were created simply by multiple cars driving across the same path. When the previous 'road' became washed out from too many cars, a new path was created just beside the previous path.

Major Mongolian highway

We were really out there....some days only 3 cars would pass us. Civilization was scarce. Luckily the 'roads' were still in fairly good condition and we could still make decent progress. One day we topped a mountain pass overlooking a small village (Bayantes) and noticed a large congregation of cars, horses and gers (yurts) on the outskirts of town. We had somehow stumbled across this town's annual Nadam festival of wrestling, horse racing and archery. We aimed the bikes straight for the festival and arrived just as the horse games were getting started. We were definitely the only tourists at this festival, invoking some serious double takes from the locals ('Where'd these stinky white guys come from?'). One of the last competitions was a challenge to see who could grab a large stick from the ground while riding a horse at full gallop. Really exciting to watch.

Touching the ground at full gallop

This guy was awesome, he drove us around and played impromtu tour guide 

Over the next few days, we dropped out of the central mountains into the desert section that stretches across western Mongolia and connects the western mountains of Mongolia to Russia and China. In the process, the roads deteriorated from intermittent hard packed dirt and sand to mostly loose sand and nonstop washboard sections. Our push bikes finally took on their literal meaning as we accepted our new reality of intermittent cycling and a lot of pushing. Progress was slow, the nonstop washboards made me feel as if I'd been operating a jack hammer for 8 hrs. I was seriously regretting not having a fat tire bike, front suspension or a motorbike. And it was blazing hot (upper 90's). One day, we had an 80 miles stretch in between towns. We loaded up on about 9 liters of water each and forged into the desert. The roads began with the promise of hard packed sand with the first 20 miles going extremely quick. Then came the deep sand. We knew our prize was a large town with pavement  (yes, pavement) and varieties of food and amenities. That was the only thing that kept me charging, pushing, grunting and sweating profusely in the sweltering heat, over washboard jackhammers and slow, slow, slow going. I drank all 9 liters and had to rely on Andrew (the camel) who generously offered another 1.5 liters to finish off the day. I can genuinely saw it was one of the toughest days I've ever had on a bike, making the reunion with my tires and pavement ever so sweet. In total, we logged about 350 miles on this major Mongolian dirt/sand highway. After polishing off a few beers, we could maybe say it was fun (borderline Type 3 fun). In total, we're just under 1,000 miles in about 3 weeks of cycling. And as always, let there be pictures!

Never carried this much water before

Stoked

Push biking

Goat action

Andrew biking across a fairly sketchy bridge in Lake Khovsgol

Some art at a local restaurant. Open to interpretation....