Urghh, the south road
21AugWe’re up and on the road easily this morning. Perhaps our bad mechanical run has finished?
We learn today why the southern route is known as not exciting. The green hills give way to desert (or similar), it starts getting hot, and there aren’t many people to talk to. The road gets filthy dirty, and so does the inside of our car. For some reason we’re now taking dust in through the right hand side of our car as well as the left, and it’s the Aral Sea experience all over again. We do cross one small creek though, and we stop to have a bit of a wash. It’s only about 15cm deep though, and it’s freezing. There is a canvas roofed truck stopped as well. It’s the bus to Ulaanbaatar. We end up shadowing it all day. It seems to stop often for no reason at all, and we chat to them here and there I get a phone number of a guy who is a student of international law in UB, just in case I need some accommodation.
Wildlife was not easy to spot in this landscape, but I did well in this case:
Things aren’t going well for us on this road though. It, and all of it’s side tracks are massively corrugated. Our car just won’t ride them at all. Without exaggerating, we can’t exceed 5mph on them, unless we go fast enough to ride on top of them, which seems to require traveling at over 40mph. In some cases we can find a side road with some smooth sand, but in other cases we have to take the 40mph option. We’re happy to travel slowly, but you can’t feasibly do 5mph for the next 1300km. Travelling at 40mph is difficult, as there are rocks, and other humps as well as the corrugations, and when we hit these it feels like we have air under the wheels. This is all made worse by having a block of wood for suspension on the rear left. To do 40mph with our crook engine is just about top speed, and is not doing it much good either. The big rocks make me nervous about dropping the tyre pressures as well, although in hindsight I should have given this a go.
Camels across the middle of the road. You can see the size of the corrugations in this picture. You might think because they are sand they’ll move when you drive on them, but it’s not the case. The camels really stink by the way.
Around lunch we pull into a small town halfway to Altay. We’re looking for fuel, and there is a petrol station, but no one can find the attendant. Instead we walk into a café and ask for some food. We are served 5 dumplings each. I don’t know whether it was the dusty situation, or the dumplings themselves, but the flavour satisfaction was undescribable. This is a strange town, with 10 shops all selling the same products. We’re looking for a cold drink, but we can’t find one anywhere. Eventually we realize there is no power, and we leave empty handed. There is even an ourdoor billiard table in this place, and the general store sells an array of parts for Russian motorcycles. Sadly no Suzuki SJ rear springs in stock though.
An abandoned house outside the small town:
These strange blue memorials are common in Mongolia, often at the top of passes. Sometimes they have people crutches incorporated in them, or the saddle of a horse?
A bit of Mongol Rally graffiti on a roadsign. There are some stickers from various teams, and Mark Whittaker (I have no idea who he is) has written on tape and stuck it to the sign some 7 days prior to our arrival. There is a piece of paper for writing messages to other teams, and I dutifully record our arrival.
We push on the Altay, arriving just on dark. This is good as we need to arrive in time to get fuel. This enables us to leave early in the morning, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to leave until the stations had opened. On the way out of town we pass a mechanics workshop and see two mongol rally cars parked outside. We’re keen to get out of town and pitch our tents before the last light disappears, but there is an obligation to stop. It’s a Spanish team, with a 30yo Seat. The electricals have given up the ghost. They’d been towed here on a truck the day before, and the Mongolian mechanic has spent the entire day running new wires for the ignition. In mid afternoon they’d set off for UB, only for the car to stop when they turned the cooling fan on. They’d turned around and come back, and now the mechanic still couldn’t fix it. Once this car is going they plan to drive it non-stop to UB! It seems this southern road is sucking the life from more than just us. There is also a Citroen parked out the front of the garage, and inside there are four more mongol cars. It turns out there is an airport here, and these are all cars that have broken on the corrugated road to Altay. They are either unfixable, or the teams have run out of motivation and flown to UB. The cars will be transported by truck once the rally is finished. There is not much we can do to help the Spanish though, and we camp just outside town in the dark.
A sign in Altay gives a helpful navigation hint:
...but often we find them just completely confusing, and take pictures for later reference:
By all accounts, the road is supposed to improve from Altay, so we go to bed hopeful.
