Today’s lesson: If it seems easy at the start, it’s not. Also, WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOORAY!!!!
Ending Point: N47°55 E106°56
Distance Traveled: 220.1 miles
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We were extremely careful not to declare anything “our last ____,” but now that it’s happened we actually can. After a late night of hanging out in the desert with our kish lak, our convoy group, we slept in and had our last standard breakfast of oatmeal and coffee then packed up camp. We were just under 200 miles from the city when we began, and we had heard that the roads would be pretty good until the finish line. So, we started out thinking it would be an easy day—a nice cruise into the city. Of course, we were wrong. We drove along “good” roads for a while and got comfortable with our pace. Then, BOOM! BOOM! We hit a couple potholes and blew out two tires. The Skoda was following close behind us and swerved quickly, making it out unscathed and ready to help us out. A few moments later, while we were checking out the car, we heard it again, BOOM! BOOM! A Mongolia family hit the same potholes and blew out two tires and sent a metal ring flying into Fabian. Luckily, Fabian sustained no injuries. We had some problems, though. We had two completely flat tires and one spare. We put the spare on one punctured tire and then went through our options. We had a good tire on a bad rim, a bad tire on a good rim, and a can of fix-a-flat. The best option was for Fabian and Oskar to go into town to have the good parts put together while we waited on the side of the road, so the rescue Skoda went to work. A few moments later, Daniel and Markus returned after hanging out with a bunch of Rally teams a few miles up the road. If only we could have been with them! There was a Panda! Instead, we got out the fix-a-flat just for ha-ha’s. Naturally, when the tire comes off the rim, it doesn’t work and the tire comes completely off. We packed the destroyed tire away and got out the soccer ball, Frisbee, and camp chairs. The Mongolian family came over, and we started a play party on the side of the road. A few hours later, Fabian and Oskar returned, and within minutes, we were back on the road! The rest of the drive was beautiful, and the Panda held up. As we came into town, the Panda did start making a few funny noises (and according to Daniel, we lost a part that hit his car?), but we turned up the music, made it through insane U.B. traffic, and crossed the finish line with our convoy!!!! Time to celebrate! Today’s lesson: If it seems easy at the start, it’s not. Also, WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOORAY!!!! Starting Point: N46°52 E103°25
Ending Point: N47°55 E106°56 Distance Traveled: 220.1 miles
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We had not been having the greatest luck with the Panda since crossing the Mongolian border, but our Panda is a trooper. She can do anything, and we had seen her fix herself a couple times already. So, when she wouldn’t start in the morning, we didn’t panic but instead reached into the backseat for the trusty Haynes manual, which suggested that we check and clean our air filter (something we had known we needed to do for about…um…two weeks at this point?). Markus even helped us out with a little compressed air—much better than just banging it on a rock—and soon we were on the road again. After a slow start, the rest of the day went swimmingly; ironically, it was the only day in Mongolia we didn’t have some sort of water crossing. The water crossing, however, was replaced with a mud crossing, which caught both Daniel and the Skoda in its grips. A little pushing and a lot of improved route-finding got us through the tricky area and to a beautiful camping spot for the night. We stopped early, as it could be our last night camping in Mongolia, and we explored the beautiful landscape around us, which made for some great photo opportunities. Stopping early also gave us time for an epic game of catch and some sunset/moonrise beers. Truly, it was convoy magic. Starting Point: N46°01 E100°25
Ending Point: N46°52 E103°25 Distance Traveled: 216.9 miles 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. Starting Point: N46°20 E97°18
Ending Point: N46°01 E100°25 Distance Traveled: 180.6 miles Today was the stretch of Mongolian driving that we’d been warned about. “The worst roads in the country,” they said; “I begged for the drive to be over,” chimed in others. But we’ve driven on Kazakh sand roads and Kyrgyz cowpaths! We thought we could best anything Mongolia could throw at us! However, there was one thing we hadn’t considered: washboard roads. Hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of washboard roads. Hours upon hours of bouncing up and down in our seat, feeling every screw in the Panda being worked loose by the cruel road surface. Slowing down in an effort to lessen the effects of the non-stop rattling, followed by speeding up to try to get to the end of the torture sooner, followed by slowing back down when the road got too physically and mentally overwhelming. Our torture was temporarily postponed for lunch. None of us were hungry, but all three teams welcomed the opportunity to force down food just because it meant we weren’t driving. While we were stopped we met a couple new friends, as a Mongolian family pulled over their motorcycle to chat with us. We didn’t understand a word that the man was saying, though that didn’t stop the man for talking to us for nearly 45 minutes in a Mongolian monologue while we hoped that we smiled, laughed, and looked concerned at the appropriate pauses. After the Mongolian tradition of the woman presenting us each with a cake of dried curds, we jumped back into our cars to continue heading east. By the time we made it into Altai, the Panda’s check engine light and oil light were blinking. We pulled into Mongol Rally Auto Service to ask about these lights, but we got a straightforward response: “You have two gauge lights blinking? After that drive all of the gauge lights in this car are blinking, and so are my eyes, ears, and brain! I’m sure your sensors are just a little rattled, but you’ll be fine to continue on.” And, based on that professional advice, we continued on. Starting Point: N47°05 E92°55
Ending Point: N46°20 E 97°18 Distance Traveled: 247.8 miles We began our day with hot breakfast at our camp beneath the snow-capped peaks, which Chase did not want to leave. We checked the altimeter on our map-less Garmin to see that we were at around 8,000 feet, so no wonder it was a bit chilly up there. By a bit chilly, we mean the tent was covered in ice when we woke up in the morning. We lost a bit of elevation (maybe 2,000 feet in the first hour) as we started driving in the direction of Hovd. Since the winding paths we assumed were roads all looked the same but took off in different directions through the mountains, we struggled with directions for a while and were pointed in the right way by some friendly locals in a Land Cruiser. Their directions specified a right turn, a mini river crossing, and then a bigger river crossing before reaching town. The mini river crossing turned out to be the more difficult of the two. Three cars went through. The Skoda and the Suzuki both lost their front license plates while the Panda got a flat tire. Chase changed the tire (luckily we kept getting the punctured tires repaired in town and were ready with two spares) while Daniel and Oskar went swimming. One Norwegian plate found, one Swedish plate found, one good tire back on the Panda, and we were back on the road. All this drama before 10 A.M.! Moments later, we joined up with the Commonwealth team and the Norwegian Pandas as we all stopped to admire a herd of camels. (Is herd the proper term for a group of camels? Anyhoo, there were about 30 camels standing in the middle of the road, and we had to wait for them to pass.) Our convoy stayed together as we crossed the “bigger river,” which everyone navigated with success! This river turned out to be quite a bit wider but significantly shallower than the first, so not only was it a successful crossing but also a fun time to play. We loved having the big convoy together again for the first time since the previous morning near the border. Like that morning, the big group didn’t stay a big group for long. When we pulled into Hovd, we stopped to chat with several teams on the side of the road, even a few teams that were abandoning their cars at that point. (We were still so thankful for the Panda’s miraculous ability to repair herself, aside from the flat tires!) In town, we made our usual circuit of the market, the gas station, and the mechanics. Since Daniel and the Norwegian Pandas were at two different mechanics, we bounced between the two before bouncing out of town with the Swedes and plans to meet up on the road later. The roads were slow-moving once again with brief moments of pavement, including one very clear in our memories. After the events of the day before, we had our muffler propped on the hat rack/trunk cover, a place that we would learn was precariously above a six-pack of Russian beer. Upon hitting a tiny bump (shockingly small actually considering the usual craters we tried to avoid), the muffler tipped and punctured a bottle. With your average beer, a small puncture would be no problem. With a 2.5 Liter bottle, we had a beer fountain on our hands. Let’s just say, the Panda had a new fragrance. We did our best, however, to air it out camping that night in a nice spot between mountains and gers. Starting Point: N48°28 E90°36
Ending Point: N47°05 E92°55 Distance Traveled: 202.5 miles 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. Starting Point: N49°29 E89°43
Ending Point: N48°28 E90°36 Distance Traveled: 104.0 miles At sunrise we were on the road again and heading into the Altai Mountains. The road we were driving was a stunning road that clung to the side of mountains as roaring rivers flowed beneath us in deep valleys. In the brief interludes when the pouring rain stopped, the low-hanging clouds enshrined everything in mist and gave an eerie quality to the beauty we were witnessing. We discovered later this afternoon that the road we had driven was supposed to be the nicest drive in Siberia according to Lonely Planet, and I believe it! By early afternoon we had reached the border to exit Russia, and we were all ecstatic. For weeks Mongolia had been a theoretical concept; sure, it was always our goal, but it was also so far away. All of a sudden we were knocking on Mongolia’s door, and the years of dreaming and months of planning had actually paid off! Now we just had to get let in. While we were waiting in line in Russia we met Team Detour, a Swedish team in a snazzy new Škoda, and they decided they’d stick with us through the border crossing as well. It only took us two hours to get out of Russia, and with no idea what to expect we pulled out of Customs Control. As we were pulling out Charla asked Chase at what point he thought the paved road would end; before he could even answer, we realized that the pavement literally stopped at Russia’s legal edge. Welcome to Mongolia! After we spent many hours waiting for Mongolia to process our paperwork, all four teams legally entered the country at around 8PM. We had no intention of driving in the dark, so we drove about five kilometers away from the border and set up a massive camp on the side of the road. That night we cooked a giant camp stove feast and passed around a few bottles to celebrate that we had made it! Although we definitely knew that the hardest part of the trip was yet to come… Starting Point: N51°40 E85°46
Ending Point: N49°29 E89°43 Distance Traveled: 328.4 miles It didn’t take long for us to reach the Russian border once we left Semey this morning. Funnily enough, that actually was a bit of a problem for us because we didn’t have a chance to blow our last remaining tenge on candy and beer at the last shop before the border, as was our custom. We did have the pleasure of meeting Raf at the border, who was a Belgian bicyclist riding from Brussels to Ulaanbataar. We were stuck at the border with Raf because we had the unfortunate timing to arrive as the night shift of border patrol was ending. At 8:30AM the border officer told Raf that he only had thirty minutes left on his shift and he wanted to spend those relaxing rather than working. We all waited for thirty minutes, and we excitedly greeted the new border officer who showed up exactly at 9 o’clock. Imagine our chagrin when he told us he had just woken up, and it would probably be about half an hour until he got his coffee and had some food. Exactly an hour after we arrived at 8:30, the morning shift finally took our paperwork and admitted us at 9:30. For the second time on our journey, we were back in Russia! Pretty soon over the border we recognized two other Rally cars even though we couldn’t tell who was in them, so we pulled them over discover our crazy South Africans who had cooked up breakfast back in Almaty! They were a part of There and Bactrian, a team of two South Africans, a Brit, and an Aussie, and they were convoying with Geographically Displaced, a team of large Norwegian men in a very small car. We quickly joined their convoy, and made the all-important stop of the day: the tire shop. The Mongol Rally can be described as a tour of the world’s tire shops, and somehow we had made it this far without getting to visit any ourselves. For the exorbitant price of 100 rubles (a little over $3) we got our tire fixed, while each of the other teams also got their tires in tip-top shape in preparation of entering Mongolia tomorrow. After a longer stop than was expected, we were on our way towards the Altai Mountains with our new friends! Starting Point: N46°04 E80°46
Ending Point: N51°40 E85°46 Distance Traveled: 481.0 miles We woke up on the early side and began our drive as soon as we could. Our goal for the day was to reach the Russian border, and we had some miles to put away! Over the course of the Rally Charla spent a large portion of her time studying the map, and today we learned that Kazakh people also enjoy maps. In the morning we were pulled over by the police (for the eighth time in Kazakhstan), and Chase walked up to the officer to see what the problem was this time. (Unlike in the US where you sit perfectly still when pulled over, in Kazakhstan the driver gets out and approaches the police officer to shake hands and exchange pleasantries.) Suddenly the officer surprised both of us by jumping in the drivers’ seat! Maintaining her cool, Charla gave him a tour of the Panda from the passenger seat, pointing out the maps, the snacks, and of course our giant stuffed panda. The officer took his time to study our map of Central Asia before hopping out and sending us on our way. A couple hours later we were doing our grocery shopping in a military town when two met approached us; they didn’t ask about us, they didn’t ask about the car, but they did ask about a map! For the second time in two hours Charla had the giant map out and then men were fascinated by where our journey had taken us so far. Our goal of getting to Russia was starting to seem a little too ambitious for today. We got into Semey around dinnertime, and after exploring the city decided it would be a fine place to dine. We devoured our meal in a local café, and as it as dark and raining we decided to stay in Semey for the evening. We decided to leave at sun-up the next morning, so it was coincidentally appropriate when the only hotel we could find was an hourly hotel. We kept it classy and purchased the 12-hour package, and called it a night. Starting Point: N46°04 E80°46
Ending Point: N50°23 E80°13 Distance Traveled: 384.4 miles Though there were eleven different Rally teams all staying at our same hostel, we finally did make it out of Almaty this morning! Our route took us north and east out of the city around Lake Kaphchagay and further on into the rolling hills of the Kazakh steppe. Unlike our adventures in western Kazakhstan, there weren’t any camel sightings here; instead of driving through sandy desert, we were gaining elevation and passing through very green and lush landscapes. When we weren’t busy admiring the scenery, we were playing leapfrog with an expedition motorcycle that had a license plate in Arabic; after a couple passes we all pulled over to talk, and we had the pleasure of meeting Johan, a South African who was riding a giant loop through Asia on a Bahraini-registered motorcycle. (We have a hard enough time using paperwork in English to get through borders using Cyrillic alphabets, and we couldn’t even imagine using paperwork in Arabic!) Johan had great tales and interesting plans, and we all decided to rendezvous later on in Ulaanbataar. After stopping at a cute little market in a small town, we found ourselves looking for a place to bed down for the evening. We pulled off the road onto a herding path, and set up camp beside the path a little way off the road. That night we were treated to one of nature’s finest shows! As we sat under stars enjoying dinner we had the pleasure of watching a captivating meteor shower overhead. The meteor shower ended when clouds rolled in, but the clouds kept the show going by hosting a lightning storm on the horizon that kept us company as we started to doze off. Starting Point: N43°13 E76°56
Ending Point: N46°04 E80°46 Distance Traveled: 347.1 miles |