UlaanBataar Mongolia - Mission Complete!!
We left Barnaul in Russia at the crack of dawn. We went to get some fuel and was asked by a local for a wheel brace as his had snapped. We offered to help and ended up breaking our own, so we needed to find a replacement pretty sharpish as we were about to enter full on off roading.
In the next town we asked some locals and they directed us to a local market where a guy was selling them, we were lucky to find one so quickly and without any hassles, so we cracked on towards the border. From Barnaul we estimated it to be 300-400km drive to the border. The roads leading us up to the border were amazing. Winding forest roads with rivers and lots of people camping and a popular spot by russian tourists. The further we got the more remote it became and even more beautiful. Behind the trees were ice capped mountains dominating the landscape. Landscapes then suddenly changed in to a more mongolian plains of nothingness for many miles. We managed to get to the border at 6.30 and we camped behind a small mountain for the evening. Nothing to be seen for miles and such a quiet location you could not hear a thing.
This was the start of many camping nights, so I managed to get the tent set up without having to look at the intructions. A good feed and we were set for the morning.
Next morning we went to the border and met two norwegen guys riding two 1939 motorcycles around the world, they were taking these bikes all the way to north america, through south america then up through africa on a 2 year adventure, we both admired them!
We finally managed to get through russian customs in to Mongolia Customs. On our arrival we were advised by two Mongol rally guys that we could be in for a long wait. We assumed that everything was sorted for us and we would be out in a few hours. Wrong! it seems that we were also set for a 2-3 day wait. Mongolian customs did not have any paperwork on our vehicles and a import tax was required. Although we were never asked directly for this, we were kept in the lurch for until the next day. On the next day at about 5pm We were promised that we would be allowed to leave in an hour (after our 30 hour wait) which turned out to be a lie and they simply went home and left us for a second evening in the cold. By this point a few other teams had joined us to we made a party of it and had some beer and vodka. We pitched up tents at the border too. The compound were were trapped in had no water, food or even light at night, we called ourselves refugees, but then recognised that even refugees would had been supplied water. Mongolian customs were disgusting in how they treat people.
Next day we decided to walk. Dan suggested that we ask for my passport and hatched a plan that we simply need to see the passport as we needed the passport details for the embassy. When the border guard gingerly handed over the passport, Dan snatched it out of my hand and legged it. The guard was not happy at all and I told her that it was my passport and we will not give it back and walked out to the car compound. Other ralliers attempted to get their passport back but with no luck. Anyway, I spoke to an english speaking girl who worked in the office and told her that today we will be walking and leaving the vehicle at the border. She politely informed me that we must leave with the vehicle, but i was adimant that we will be walking out if nothing is sorted pronto.
Half our later a army camoflauged guard approached me asking for my passport. We surrounded him saying “niet passport” and I was hoping that 8 of us was surrounding him was intimidating, which i think it was because we offered a copy of our passport in the end and he was happy with that.
Whithin 2 hours we were processed, we think that what happened with my passport really pushed the buttons and they got their finger out. There was no way we were sleeping another night in a car park, otherwise we would have jumped the fence.
On our way out we managed to buy our insurance and fly out of there and pushed on offroad until dark. We pitched up in a really nice secluded spot overlooking some mountains and lit a log fire to keep the mozzies away. We were really happy as we were moving forward. We had a good feed and a chat, it was a good night.
Next morning we packed up and headed off to the road we left the night before. We spotted some telegraph poles and thought we would detour but keeping the telegraph poles in our sights. We aimed through this large mountain gorge, a narrow gap between mountains which had a really aweful road which was hard work getting through. There were locals living whithin the gorge and they kept mostly goats. They were quite suprised to see two weserners drive past in our old 4×4 on some really impassable roads. It took a couple of hours to drive through this gorge and we were both knackered at this point and continued to follow the telegraph poles to a local village. The village was pretty poor, but the locals were friendly and everyone came out to see us and many friendly faced. We managed to get a location on a map and realised that we need to drive some distance to get around the mountain to the other side and therefor we drove to Altai using a much harder route to the main road we left. We drove all day to get past the mountain range which set us back half a day.
At about 4pm we stopped in a local town to see if we could change some dollars and get some fuel. Driving through the town (called Tonhill i think) we found a bank. We walked in to the bank to find no one there, strange we walked through the banks office with no one in sight, not the most secure banks i have ever seen. Outside it was also deserted, no one in sight. We headed towards a local shop and found 4 locals sitting inside having a drink and food. They were most welcoming and sat us diwn for some beer and a small bite to eat. They then started calling friends telling them that they have westerners in their shop, they were most excited and we found ourselves talking to people on the phone. We were however in a hurry to crack on and we managed to get our dollars changed by the shopkeeper and a can of beer each. Outside we had a photo moment and the shopkeepers son came to see us, a nice guy, a famous mongolian actor who was dead friendly and managed to get us some diesel. Dan had a ride on someones motorbike and another guy had a drive of our truck. After a few more swigs on someones beer we had to say our goodbyes and leave. We really needed to get back to the main road.
We drove on further for a few more hours, and we started to get longer smoother tracks for a while which allowed us to gather more momentum, in mongolia there are loads of tracks and its hard to know which one to take as most run parallel to each other, some fork off. On one track was us and on the other side was a small curtain sided van bombing along at a pretty great speed. We drove a few km’s besides each other but then noticed the track seemed to fork off and we were not to happy about our direction. So we headed back to find the track the van was on. We managed to find the track and bombed down to catch up with the van. 10 Minutes later we come across the van on its side, it had lost control and buried itself on its side in the sand. The four occupants were a oldish guy with 2 women and a child. They flagged us down and we stopped. I got out the first aid kit thinking i was doctor kildare but then realised I am not in to blood and stuff. One woman had a really bad cut and the child had a cut on his arm. They were not that bothered about us helping their cuts so the first aid kit got put away. Also they did not want a lift either, but did ask if we could give a note to anyone and hopefully someone call a relative. We agreed to do this and we managed to find someone after the third attempt to call someone to notify them that they were in trouble. We hope they were found ok in the end.
That night we camped up with a stoney desert, we were pretty wacked and had a feed and went stright to bed. We only had a 2 hour drive to the main road next morning before we were back on track.
Next morning we packed up our gear and came across scorpions under our tent, good job i had stuff my shoes with socks for that reason.
We moved on to get back to the main road. The truck was not in the best of shape, we noticed she was very low on the back, and when dan took a look to noticed both back springs were snapped. Not good news, so we gingerly made our way to the city of Altai and found a shady spot to do some repairs. We parked outside a government building and used their paving stones to jack up our car body to remove the old springs. Luckily i brought 2 new springs with us and whithin 2.5 hours both srpings were swopped. The locals were quite impressed and asked dan if he was a mechanic! Must say Dan did a brilliant job!
Whilst changing the springs we noticed the rear diff was leaking a lot of oil.Something else we really needed to keep an eye on.
we pressed on that day over some tough slippery sandy roads, over a few mountains. The weather got quite bad, very windy and we had to keep all windows shut because of sand being driven in the car, then we came across a sandstorm, we could not see a thing and quite scary as we were driving at about 5mph and came across a river. We crossed the river but could hardly see a thing. We had to stop to prevent ourselves getting lost or crashing in to something. Finally it cleared over a little and with confirmation from a truck driver we managed to get back on track.
that night we camped quite near a town, near a road and dirt was realy setting in to us, our truck stank of road, desert and 2 smelly blokes. At this point my hair was so dirty that i could not even put my fingers through my hair and was stuck up like a clown.. we were a right mess because we had 3 days at the border too. So we were very very keen to get to Ulaan Bataar so we could get a full wash!
Getting to sleep that night was disturbed by blkes on horses surrounding the tent… I was too tired to worry about it.
Next morning we got up at 6am and moved on very quickly to press on! We had to stop for Diff oil which dan topped up. We then came to the last town before UlaanBataar and we again needed cash for fuel and food. The banks were useless and full and queue dodgers which really annoyed me. We did however managed to get a good feed at a chinese restaurant. Some authetic stuff too, not english crap. This was the best meal we had in many days and went down lovely. We were also told that ulaanBataar was only a 5 hour drive away and we were dead happy with that. It turned out that the next 300km’s was brand new road and was a releif as we were keen to get to UB while it was still light.
We did hit some bad roads for about 40km but that was shortlived and we glided in to UB feeling really happy with ourselves. Ub was very busy city, but we managed to get ourselves booked in to the Chinggis Khan hotel, this was embarresing walking in to a lovely hotel looking like tramps, literally!! and smelly!
The shower was the best shower we have ever had, the dirt that came out was incredible!
We spent a couple of says in UB, we went to hand our truck over to GoHelp and Dan got in to trouble for not stopping when a policeman asked him too, was quite funny as I have never seen a cop run so fast, picture the cop in terminator II running, that was him. We convescated the truck keys and we had to get a GoHelp interpreter to get us out of trouble! It was funny though.
Truck finaly got handed over which was a sad day, but a good cause.
Our final night we feasted on more chinese food and beer.
Total Police Stops: 18
Total Fines: 1
Total Souvenirs: 1
Total Tips: 1
Total Police chase by a running cop: 1
Bribes: 0
Punctures: 0
There was a lot more to the adventure than what was documented here, too much to remember, but we had a fantastic time and one heck of an adventure!
