Travelling West Through Mongolia

It has been an amazing 7 days travelling west through Mongolia. Our route took us from Ulaan Baatar to Kharhorin (360km) to Tariat (330 km) to Ullistai (336 km) to Teel river ( 250 km) to Khovd (177 km) then to the Russian Border (310 km). Don’t be fooled by what would seem little distances, these are not roads but more like dirt/sand tracks with numerous potholes that you drop into unsuspectingly, miles of corrugations in the tracks that send you teeth chattering, crevasses that you need to avoid quickly, river crossings and dubious bridges!. We are lucky to go faster than 20km/hr for much of the days. One day we left at 7.30 am and drove basically non stop to get to the next camp, arriving at 8.30pm in the dark (13 hours of bobbing and shacking). Cars were breaking down on mass but luckily our car seems to be hanging in there with just the odd smaller problems like the front bumper falling off,  blinker lights missing (somewhere down a hole in the desert) and a small oil leak.

It is however an incredible country. The scenery is magnificant with us driving throughvast open barren plains, with snow capped mountains way in the distance and the Gobi desert infront! (see photo) 

The first night we stayed in a Ger or Yurt which was actually very comfortable and warm. 

but after that we had 5 days in a row of camping – and that was quite something!! we were camping sometimes up at 2500m and the temperatures over night would drop down to -12. Everything frooze including us! (I thought maybe craig was trying to punish me) They don’t call this an Endurance rally for nothing!