After an easy breakfast on the roadside, we began quickly gaining elevation again. We had thought we were done with Mongolian mountains, but we had another high-elevation day of adventures to look forward to. As we got higher up the roads became trails and the trails became paths, and pretty soon we had no indicators of which direction was correct. The paths split and came back together like the channels of a braided river, with an occasional path splitting off into the distance on its own. The landscape, though beautiful, was so monotonous at times that it was easy to accidentally split off the main track, and evidently that’s what we did sometime before lunchtime.
Once we had eaten a good meal and were thinking clearly again, we spent the afternoon navigating back to the main “road” just in time for a river crossing. At first glace our troop of small cars was intimidated by the Toyota Land Cruiser sitting unmoving in the middle of the current; luckily for us, however, it turns out the Land Cruiser coincidentally had engine trouble in the stream, and for us the water barely made it halfway up our doors! We pulled over to camp shortly after our river, and celebrated our successful day of route-finding and riving-crossing by watching a beautiful sunset with Daniel and enjoying an evening under an extremely bright full moon.
Charla and Chase woke up as the sun was beginning to illuminate the amazing landscapes around our camp. Unfortunately, we are early risers, and we knew that it would take a long time for all of the other teams to get prepared to leave; taking advantage of this extra time, and following up on something he’d wanted to do for weeks, Chase started walking away from camp.
Our camp was surrounded by large hills or small mountains, however you wish to describe them, and Chase wanted to climb one. He picked one nearby, and just started climbing; it was gradual at first, but the top third of the mountain involved quite a scramble. After stopping to catch his breath a couple times he completed the final scramble up the hill, and was able to look around and enjoy the surroundings. Looking back the way we had come last night, Chase could still see the border area structures and further could see Siberia’s snow-capped peaks to the north. In the other direction, he could see the road we were going to take today winding into the distance before passing behind more hills; the road passed a couple lakes and a few yurts before it disappeared. And, by looking back where he had just climbed, he could see his camp very small below him. However, the most magical sight was looking over the other side of the mountain: on the other side of the mountain there were no structures, no major roads, and few indications that other humans had ever set foot on that steppe before. It was beautiful. Chase, alone and on top of the hill, sat and breathed it all in for a few minutes. Eventually he could see movement in camp, and he certainly didn’t want to miss breakfast, so he gathered his thoughts and his camera, placed one more stone on the cairn on top of the hill, and descended back to camp, picking wildflowers for Charla has he went.
Unfortunately for Team Turnagain, the entire day didn’t match that magical feel. We started having exhaust problems back in Kazakhstan, but today was the day when an ill-placed rock actually tore the exhaust pipe off the engine. Oh no! Our first idea was simply to break the exhaust completely off the car right there, but of course it wouldn’t be that easy; the exhaust pipe passed over the rear axle on its way to the muffler, which meant we couldn’t remove it from the front or the rear. Luckily Daniel, a Norwegian solo-driver of team Mongol Viking whom we’d met earlier in the day, had some metal wire that we used to tie the exhaust to the underbody. Our thought was that if we could make it to the next town we could find a mechanic who could cut the exhaust from the muffler, thus allowing us to remove them in two pieces. It was a great plan, until the wire job only held for approximately forty or fifty feet before we were back on the side of the road. Now understanding that we needed some type of roadside fix, we had to start getting creative. (It’s what the Mongol Rally is all about!) Daniel brought a crowbar out from the back of his Alto, and with a serious amount of effort we were finally able to use the crowbar to break the weld connecting the exhaust and the muffler. Once the weld was finally broken and we could remove both pieces separately, it was time to get back on the road. We had suffered an hour delay, but at least it was in a beautiful location!
Throughout the afternoon we had been slowly but steadily gaining elevation, and when we finally stopped for the night we were well and truly in the mountains. Our camp was under two beautifully snow-capped peaks, and the views all around were spectacular. The only problem with our camp, though, was that temperatures tend to get a little chilly when you’re at over 8,000 feet elevation. In our not-very-thorough planning, we had pictured Mongolia to be full of deserts and warm temperatures, and we were woefully ill-prepared for a night that would see ice forming on the outside of the tent. We didn’t all hang out around camp as much as usual, since it was much warmer in our sleeping bags, but we did spare a little time to take in the majestic mountains before putting on every article of clothing we had and shivering ourselves to sleep.
Our day started when we wandered into the hostel’s kitchens to find two South Africans cooking a breakfast feast while lamenting that their Rally clothes hadn’t been enough to get them past the strict dress codes of Almaty’s clubs the night before. After a quick run to the shop to contribute ingredients, we sat back and spent the morning in the kitchen swapping stories and eating like royalty.
Eventually around noon we decided it was time to hit the road, but one thing first: Chase wanted to check out the Green Bazaar, Almaty’s largest bazaar. Once we reunited with the Elephants and the Lumberyaks it was off to the Bazaar, only to discover that it was closed on Mondays. Luckily for us though there was a little market next door, where Chase was able to purchase the much-coveted traditional Kazakh hats. By the time we left the market (and we watched the Elephants and Lumberyaks get pulled over by Almaty’s finest), it was already after 3PM; rather than hitting the road at such a late hour, we decided to spend the afternoon doing personal admin and then meet with Chase’s friend Aggey in the evening.
Right around sunset Aggey arrived at our hostel and offered to take us on a tour of his city. Aggey has spent his entire life living in Almaty and climbing tall peaks around the world; in June he had been in Alaska to climb Denali, and when he met Chase the two decided that they’d have to meet up during the Rally. Aggey’s pride in Almaty and in Kazakhstan in general was obvious as he told us the history of this major city at the crossroads of Central Asia. Well before we rolled into town in our Panda, the Mongols had crossed the Kazakh steppe, the traders of the Silk Road had plied their wares, the Soviet Union annexed Kazakhstan, revolution had led to the world’s longest-serving President in a “democracy,” and rapid development and modernization in a shrinking and increasingly-connected world all proved that Almaty is truly the social, cultural, historical, and financial capital of this interesting country.
The highlight of the evening was when Aggey brought us to Kishlak, a traditional Kazakh restaurant in the heart of the city. Like Kazakhs, we drank green tea and fermented mare’s milk while reclining beside the low table that was surrounded by beautiful tapestries on the walls. Aggey explained that a “kishlak” is the name for a large camp when multiple families of traveling nomads all temporarily join together; the perfect symbolic parallel to our convoys all camping together in the Kazakh desert! We feasted on traditional meals ordered by Aggey, and went to bed that night with full stomachs, active imaginations, and a strong desire to make it back to this wonderful city.