As far as cycling days go, this wasn't the best. When the day starts with an eviction from our hotel at the ungodly hour of 9am, we should learn to read the omens. Despite an excellent bowl of breakfast banshtai shol (meat and vegetable soup with meat dumplings) at one of the zoogin gazars (dining room) in the main street, we were chased out of town by a pair of dogs. Then came the 50km of erratic headwinds. And dust clouds that crossed the road and temporarily blinded us, first from our left, then from our right...
It's lucky we aren't superstitious, or we may not have followed the signs to the tourist ger camp in a Nature Reserve 10km down a dirt and sand track off the main road. The guy on the motorbike who stopped to help with directions suggested it was 4km, but that's not the point. Here we are – in a ger-camp purpose-built for tourists, its true – but we have had the best plate of tsuivan (stirfried handmade noodles with meat and vegetable) yet in Mongolia, we have a ger to ourselves (well, apart from the Surlys) with a wood stove, and we just watched the sun set over the mountains behind us. Life could be worse, and there's a friendly dog at the door of our ger, waiting in vain for some scraps.
Day 4 of cycling: Erdenesant to Khogno Khan Uul Nature Reserve - 64km
This wilderness blog post was powered by Shimano dynamo hub, Ewerk, HTC PDA-phone and Mobicom GPRS.
1 comments:
Glad to hear the GPRS is working out!
Be forewarned if you choose to "cut the corner" to regain the highway further west (instead of going back the way you came from), you'll hit some very sandy bits... Better to go back the way you came from. But probably you won't read this before heading out anyway!
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