hoboworld.to

Mongolian Robotic Man – Mongolia

After sleeping in our plan to leave early from Ulaanbaatar was dashed. It turns out that this was a blessing in disguise given that it had snowed over night. We now found that leaving later meant the snow and ice could melt somewhat. It was bloody freezing. It took us around 2 hours to get packed up and we ended up having a nice breakfast and leaving around 10:30am.. The plan was to head to the border so that we could cross first thing Monday morning. After leaving Ulaanbaatar the feeling of relief was amazing after 14 days of frustration. However crossing the mountains to get out of the city went from freezing to freezing plus plus plus (that’s extra freezing).. the thermometer was reporting -2c with a strong cross wind making the ride particularly unpleasant.. at least once we crossed the mountains we had sunshine and warmth.

hoboworld.to – Russia

We soon passed a group of two cars and a motorcycle. They waved to us but we didn’t stop because they had been a fair way away from the road. It turns out that when we stopped for Lunch they stopped by us cooking on the side of the road.. It was a Japanese group who are traveling and making a documentary/TV Show from Portugal to Tokyo via central Asia. The rider (Toi Jugatsu) had two support vehicles and was riding a Honda Africa Twin in very nice condition. Their route had been similar to ours and they had been traveling for a similar length of time. After chatting for some time they set back off and we continued with our lunch. The plan was that we would meet them the next day at the border between 8am and 9am…… whooo hooo an early start hopefully this time we would actually make it. That night we stayed in a forest with some dog keeping watch over our campsite… It was very very cold and in the morning we woke to a very frosty start but with beautiful sunshine to keep us warm as the day progressed. We got the the border about 30minutes later and did all the usual pre border crossing preparation… We met up with the Japanese group who had arrived only a few cars before us. We then went through without any issues. In record time it took us 2 hours to get through the Mongolian side and less than an hour to get into Russia.. a new record.. 16hours the first time, 3 hours the second time and less than an hour the third time. We met the Japanese rider at the border post on the Mongolian side.

Jūgatsu Toi, James and Myself (Photo Courtesy of Toi)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 8:20 am and is filed under Adventure Motorcycling, London to Sydney, motorcycle touring, Russia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.