Across the desert - UB to Beijing

Train No 24 from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing left at 7am on 20th August.

We again were lucky with Chinese conductors who with no fuss loaded our bikes onto the train at the end of the carriage - no extra charge (we have heard all sorts of storıies of people not being let on the train or having to pay extra for the bikes)

This time we had a nice Mongolian restaurant to spend our last Mongolian money - yamm!

And so we left the skyline of the capital cıty behind and rolled South.

Like in the TransMongolian from Moscow each cariage has a coal fired water urn so we had a constant supply of piping hot water - nice!

The desert was one big open shrubby nothingness...

...with a cracking sunset, sandy settlements and gers in the middle of nowhere...

The border crossing - Mongolia/China took quite long. First the controls and then the wheels had to be changed as the wheel gauges in the two countries are different. The entire train was driven into a big hall late at night. Then massive hydraulic jacks lifted the carriages - with us in it - and the old bogies were rolled out from underneath us and replaced with new Chinese ones. All in all we spent 7hours with no toilet -not allowed during border crossing - but it was very interesting.

Beijıng greeted us with rain and a colourful array of umbrellas. We arrived midday and were immediately taken by the place - great for cycling!

Across the desert, through the forbidden city and straight to the beach!

We landed in Ataturk Airport yesterday and rather then cycliıng into Istanbul we headed straight for the coast and to the beach. Well, "straight" is not quite right - navigation has been challenging with roads definitely not set up for cyclist - well nor for motorists either - the road signs are very sporadic - but we got here: Silivri campsite at the beach - lovely. It's rather hot here and we have been in the sea lots already and are gorging on fruit. Tonight we are having dinner with a campervan couple from Essex (the only other foreign tourists on our campsite).

Beijing was fantatstic and we had brilliant four days includıng the forbidden city, the great wall and a kungfu show. Unfortunately the blog was censored in China so more on our time there later.

Pics and further update to follow - over and out.

The Traveling bunch & China here we come!

DAY 66 out of 88 and our last in UB - Tim got a new hair cut (grade 1 - sorry Mary!) and we stocked up for the 30hours train ride across the Gobi desert - cannot wait!

The last few nights we have stayed at Idre's Guesthouse a great place -$5 for a dorm bed with shower & breakfast & it's super clean - bargain!, near the train station. Lots of travelers come through here and we shared stories with those who are also about to move on and with those who are just arriving. Great way to finish our experience here.

Overall we met many travelers of all nationalities in Mongolia including a handful of cycle tourists. In UB we got to know Spaniard Alvaro, a cycle touring clown who has been on the road for 6 years and cycled 83.000km so far!

Another impressive traveler we met briefly in central Mongolia was this young lady driving her motorbike (solo) from France to Tokyo across Siberia and Mongolia - putting Boreman and McGregor to shame!

So many people and everybody has an adventure to report - inspiring!

We have cycled about 900km in Mongolia and covered about 1800km including Public Transport. It's been awesome - never straight forward & always an adventure! There is so much more to discover here and cycling is a great way to do it - who knows we might even be tempted to take part in the new Mongolia Bike Challenge one year! (we met the convoy of support vehicles a few weeks back & it sounded like an exhilarating way to cross this country! - bit of training required,mind)

Anyway - Time to move on - China here we come!

UB till we leave

We are back in UB and have used our first day to update all our Mongolian posts with photos!(just scroll down from here to check them out also check "old Mongolia posts" for some photos from the TransMongolian train) We will be in touch before we leave on the train....

Back to UB & the ultimate Public transport experience

So there we were in Moron - the aimag capital of Khovsgol, a city we found completely without electricity during the day (10am-19pm - due to repairs for a week, can't ever imagine that in UK or GER, but here people are used to it and are adaptable)

There is a big wrestling stadium in Moron (like in most towns) - Mongolians celebrate and worship their wrestlers, often with statues, like this one below.

When we arrived it started raining and snowing for a couple of days, so we ended up staying three nights. Below is one of the main streets of the city.

We visited the market, where you can buy anything the Mongolian household needs. Here is the meat hall.

In summer Mongolians pick forest fruits, all types of berries, strawberry, cranberry,blackberry, blueberry - at the market you can buy bucket loads - so we got ourselves stocked up - tasty treat.

We also ate out each day and had a favourite restaurant, serving fried beef with rice and some salad. (eating out is quite cheap, this one being top range at about 20,000MG Togrog/about 10UK pounds for two, including starters and drinks)

Initially we had planned to head North for a few days before taking transport back to UB (what the locals call Ulaanbaatar) We decided traveling further by bike would be tempting fate as we now had 1week left and did not want to get stuck anywhere with a broken rim. So we took a stroll down to the "Public transport" station.

Therer are all sorts of transport opportunities, mini vans, trolley busses, jeeps and public transport busses. After a few hours of scouting around we realised that it would not be that easy to get someone to take us back to UB or to the North with our bikes. We basically had to go with what was on offer. We were approached by the driver of the Public Transport bus to UB for the next day. For a juicy extra fee (double the normal price, that's 110,000MG Togrog for two people) he would take us, so we said yes.

The bikes were cunningly strapped to the roof of the bus. Public transport in Mongolia has much more demand than supply and ususally the ticket office will sell tickets for all numbered seats and then the driver will fill the rest of the bus with as many more people as he can. The bus basically leaves when its full, which can delay departure for hours (waiting for more people) We were luckily only delayed by one hour.

So on we rolled - with 52 people in an originally 30 seater bus, including lots and lots of luggage stowed away underneath seats so most people were resting their feet on their luggage. The stretch between Moron and UB is about 680km and takes 20hours! The first 15hours are off road on bumpy dirt track, complete with river crossings and mountain passes (one time we had to get off and walk up the hill for 30min - as the bus would not make it with us in it). There were some scary moments! We started at 15.00pm, stopped for dinner in a service station and drove into the night. Everyone tried to go asleep, the kids were launched across everyone's lap (Tim's lap was the pillow for one little girl all night) and everyone just sleeps on top of everyone else, like the poor guys that sit on barrels and makeshift seats in the middle isle, they just fall asleep on the laps of the people next to them.

We also had the inevitable break down, something with the exhaust. We stopped at a village and immediately all male passengers, local villagers and the two drivers were all getting stuck in to repair the damage. The villagers found a spare part (where???) and some passengers proved pretty handy in mechanics - Tim did his bit and assisted with light - holding our bright headtorch for those working under the vehicle.

At 6am we finally reached the tarmac road and the last 5hours were smooth and we rolled into UB for 11am (the drivers did not even bother to stop anymore, but did "flying swaps").

We checked into a nice hotel for one night and slept 14hours straight!

Chartership Results!

Whoopee. Results through for chartership and guess what I've passed. Relief. Maybe a wee bit of 'Chingis Khan' vodka to celebrate this evening...

Epic!What a place to grow up!

Phew where to start - the last few days have been epic. We are now in Moron in Khovsgol aimag.
We started from Tariat via the Northern shore of the lake "Tsagaan Nuur". After days and days of open steppe we now found ourselves amidst the hills and lava fields - wow!

The tracks were decidedly more rocky. We keep passing livestock, like these goats and sheep. A family needs a herd of about 300 animals to make a living. We have been asked if we had animals and more than once we said no, but mentioned your farm, Helen (Tim's sister) in New Zealand and people were impressed!

Our new road, leading straight through the central heart of Mongolia was more and more off the beaten track and involved plenty of river crossings.

We also proved a mini-Tourist curiosity ourselves, sometimes being railroaded by a busload of Korean whilst having lunch. Once in a while we were asked to pose for photos with other tourist, like these guys. We asked for a return photo.

The top of hills and mountains are marked with "stick ovoos", like this one marking the last pass (bl***y steep and sandy, Sara fell off!) before we finally got a view of of the lake - nice!

We really enjoyed the cruise along the lake in the afternoon heat. This big expanse of water is quite a site after the many days of water sparsity.

We stop early for a swim and some bike maintenance - and oh no! Tim discovers a split in his rim. That's no good! Well at least we made it to here - we decide to go on as far as the bike takes us - although it is remote here, plenty of trucks and jeeps pass us during the day and in an emergency we are sure to be able to hitch a lift to the next town.

Lovely breakfast with lake view - the usual: bag of cakes and 3 in 1 coffee mix - sachets (that's 60% sugar, 10% coffee and 30% powder milk - quite a morning turbo booster!)

Early morning riding. This day was cold - with hail, wind and storm.

A rocky track took us over the highest pass so far 2354m

Our orange survival bag proves to be invaluable to wait out sudden thunder, hail and rain.

We have a day of icecream heads from the cold weather and numb feet from the cold river crossings - good fun!

The landscape is ever changing from green lush valleys to dry rocky wild west Cowboy land. When we roll into valleys young children come running from gers offering us freshly picked forest berries from jars. Yamm! It seems like quite a fairy tale childhood, endless valleys to roam, lots of animals to play with and complete & utter freedom in the first few years in life. What a place to grow up!

However the next morning Sara wakes up with a fever and drained of all energy. So we use the opportunity and stay in a Tourist Ger camp for a couple of nights. Basically a cluster of traditional gers with a facilities and a restaurant building. Very cosy.

Each ger has a table, a wooden stove and a couple of beds. Tim went up the hill, whilst Sara slept off her fever. See a view over our camp below.

After passing through the small town of Jargalant we crossed another interesting bridge, classified for 1.5tonnes - not sure whether that was before or after the pier failure....does not seem to stop anyone here from going over it with any manner of vehicle.

Yak, yak, yak - these are everywhere. They look heavy and cumbersome but are extremely agile and quick.

Here at the top of the last pass before the town of Shine Ider - whenever we stop, take a breather, someone will turn up out of nowhere - just like this herds man. Often not to talk with us at all - but to just sit or stand there and check us out. (funny at campsites - as they would just sit and look at us and our tent for literally hours... the guy with the rifle was a little concerning mind)

Beautiful vista, top of the pass.

The roll into Shine Ider was just like riding on a dried up river bed - not good on a broken rim!

We also made some new friends - these young men had great fun knocking each other on the head to test the "quality" of our helmets.

From Shine Ider we decided to take a Jeep - as a precaution, as Sara now also had developed an all over body rash (which thankfully actually disappeared after a day) and we did not want to risk the Tim's rim. So we met our driver Sanjaar - who had his license for less than a year (proudly presented to us) and his Russian jeep, including full music system with 180 songs on shuffle> Whoppee! After much "brake pumping" and "cooling off" stops we made it to Moron. Guess a jeep ride is one of the must-do experiences in Mongolia - tick!

There is no chance of bike repair here (that'll have to wait until Beijing) Anyway - with bellies full of berries from the market and delicious fried beef or freshly caught fish with rice dinners we are looking forward to our last week here before we hop on the train to Beijing...and cross the Gobi desert.