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Storms a coming in the Gobi - Mongolia

After leaving Khovd we had our sights set on Altai which is a town that was originally built by the Russians as a stop over on the main route south. Its right in the Gobi. The road surface deteriorated faster than we could have expected. The 5km of paved road quickly turned into a rutted nightmare. It was about 50km out of town that we started to follow around the edge of a lake. The roads disappeared into a tangled mess of tracks. We kept trying to find a track without so many ruts, rocks and corrugations but we had no luck. The pace quickly dropped down to a measly 20km per hour average as we tried to navigate around the obstacles. It was after riding for 5 hours and only completing 100km that we decided to find a place to camp. It was in a huge wide valley with big 3000+ meter mountains along each side.

Getting away from the Storms - Mongolia

The valley floor was basically a mix of deep sand and loose rocks/boulders which made for an interesting time finding somewhere to camp. In the end we decided that the best place to camp was next to a grave site.. it happened to be one of the only flat areas in the valley.. So that night we went to sleep with the ghost of someone or something that died many years ago there to keep watch….

The next morning we woke again to storm clouds coming towards us.. the storms that we had reported to us must be on their way.. it was time to make tracks and get out of the storms way. We definitely didn’t want to be in bog. Our going had already been pretty slow so if it got wet we would probably have to have an extended break in some shanty town along the way while we waited for things to dry out… not something that we wanted to do.

Gobi Expanse - Mongolia

All the “towns” we had gone past since Khovd had been more like American Western movie towns with just a collection of wooden shacks along the road. All together not very inviting. The morning was pretty uneventful we still pushed on in the deep sand and rutted tracks. Our average speed had increased to around 35km which we had been pretty pleased with…. that was until the road disappeared again as we had to cross some dry river beds… by looking around we could see that it looked more like a car/truck grave yard with all the flat tyres and car bits that had fallen off other vehicle’s. Which raises another point about Mongolia… In Kazakhstan which has similarly poor roads people have flat tyres etc.. bits fall off but generally they move them out of the way of the road.. in Mongolia they just leave all the bits all over the road.. riding along you have to dodge rocks, ruts, spare tyres, engine parts, metal spikes, bits of fire wood, scrap metal, crashed car panels etc.. basically anything they can leave in the middle of the road they will..

Having a break in the shade near a salt lake - Gobi Desert

It seems that it may actually be a national sport.. so riding in Mongolia can be summarized by a severe lack of sign posts, no real main road to anywhere in the west or south, and a “game” of always trying to dodge the rubbish that they have left everywhere.. its really quite a tragedy that some of these beautiful sights are ruined by the amount of litter left… anyway with my rant over its time to get back to the story.. We managed to do a whopping 156km in 7 hours of riding which was a pretty good effort… but we had become very tired. The effects of the virus had been particularly bad on me and it wasn’t really making my Mongolian experience enjoyable.. that night we realised that the nuts that connected Heathers subframe to the front of the bike had both been sheared off resulting in the rear half of her bike being loose.. not a good sign. We had to find a mechanic that could replace the bolts which really meant getting to Altai… it was still some 300km away. That night we camped near a Yurt in the middle of a huge flat plain… only in the very far distance could we see any land formations… great for navigation the GPS was completely useless except for giving us a rough idea of the direction we are going in. The next day we had to make it to Altai so that we could get Heathers bike fixed as we had no spare bolts.. That meant a very very slow days ride to make sure we didn’t cause any damage. We had not seen very many other vehicles since leaving Khovd so getting a tow would be out of the question.

The road was still heading south and the further we got the more sand we ended up riding in.. the surrounding countryside was now becoming huge plains with sand dunes or deep sand valleys. Basically meant that riding had to be either full on throttle or taking easy.. That night we made it to Altai quiet late. Absolutely knackered.. We had to find a hotel there was no way we wanted to camp after such a tough few days with the virus/fever/tough terrain.. the first hotel we found wanted us to pay $60US for a room without a bathroom.. WTF.. this was a crap town that wanted to charge major city prices.. there was no way in hell.. we ended up finding another hotel that charged us $10 and included the disco next door being absolutely crazy loud.. the pit toilet was also a real win for us.. nothing like the experience of not a good nights sleep with an awful loo experience… people would stand outside the loo and just aim It stank so bad.. The next morning we went to the Mongol Rally service centre and they replaced the bolts on Heathers bike… also fixed her pannier bracket which had also been sheared off the previous day from Vibrations… It was time to restock and Head for Ulaanbaatar.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 1:24 am and is filed under accidents, Adventure Motorcycling, Altai, Gobi, London to Sydney, Mongolia, motorcycle touring, Olgii, Wild Camping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.