We arrived in Mongolia on Tuesday at lunch time and could easily have been in UB that evening. It would have been a shame not to experience the Mongola countryside on the way though, so me, Tom and the two Daves we had bumped into in the middle of the Siberian forests set up a campsite in the hills and got a campfire going under the stars and played a little golf from the top of a massive hill. The first annual Mongolian Open?
The scenery here is spectacular in a different way to the other countries we have passed through. Less dramatic but almost totally unspoiled. Wild horses, meandering rivers and gers all dot the landscape. We're disapponted to not have entered from the western border as we don't get to do any off roading from the northern route. We may take Molly out west into the Gobi over the next few days, if she feels like working!
We started to have a few mechanical problems on our way into Mongolia, with the engine cutting out whenever the revs dropped low. Not too much of an issue, but very annoying to stall at checkpoints and then struggle to get going again. We think we stalled at least 40 times driving through UB.
We got to Dave's Place (the checkpoint) yesterday afternoon at about 2pm after shredding a tyre on some rocks halfway to the capital. Thankfully Dave and Dave gave us their spare off road snow tyre which was able to get us the 60km we needed. We we're 16th to arrive in UB, and the first of the Caspian Sea southern routers which was a surprise. We had been convinced that Smith Monkey Madness were a day ahead of us but later foud out that they had stayed 2 nights in Novosibirsk after seeing how attractive the women there were!
A beer was awaiting us on our arrival along with many other teams, and a game of cricket was organised by the owner of the Taj Mahal restaurant. Operation Panda were easily the best cricketing team there, taking three wickets and scoring about 20 runs between us. We lost, but claim a spiritual victory over the other team because they were so crap at bolwing that it made it impossible to hit the ball. After such a long drive the game of cricket was pretty surreal.
We've got a guesthouse to stay in and will probably be spending most of our days eating and drinking around the city. Teams keep rolling in which makes for good banter. Everyone has some mad stories of what has happened to them en route. Hopefully we'll be able to get another Russia visa and some train tickets soon and start to head home!
In summary... we've only gone and bloody done it!
