We arrive in UB...eventually, and not so triumphantly
24AugI wake at around 5am to the sound of beating pots. It seems the truck stopped last night at some sort of Mongolian truck stop. It consists of 3 Gers. The people who ride in the cab of the truck, the driver, his wife, and the 3 girls have all spent the night in one of the gers. The blue truck is gone now, and we don’t see them again.
The ladies who run the truck stop are now cooking a Mongolian truckies breakfast inside one of the gers, and they knock on the car window and invite us in. As you can imagine, I am unbelievably famished, and enjoy some tea, a bowl of boiled rice with lamb, two lamb ribs, and then the best...a lamb schnitzel fried in some sort of batter in a big wok. The truck guys each take a plastic bag of these schnitzels with them, but we have to be mindful that we have about US$10 of local currency between us. Breakfast costs us around $1.50 each, so that helped.
With only 300km to UB, we’re hoping to be there for midday. However we stop so many times! We finally reach bitumen, and the truck stops immediately. We’re told to get down in case of Police. For 1 hour we crouch in the footwells of the Suzuki. I may have had injuries from the accident, but a combination of sleeping in the car, and now crouching in the footwell is beating me up good and proper.
One of the visitors for the day. Sitting inbetween the seats on the handbrake was rather painful, so at times we’d lock the doors and pretend to be asleep.
We were constantly the centre of attention on the truck. I took this picture of Stephen on one of the many times he entertains locals. They were desperate to have a wrestle with either of us, but I think they knew I was too small to be silly enough. Stephen might be interested though, and they never gave up trying:
At the end of the bitumen we stop again. This time it’s for an hour. There is some sort of a problem, but we can’t work out what it The Volvo guys drive past, see our car and stop. We chat for a while and agree to meet in UB. We are now traveling in convoy with a Hyundai Excel, filled with family friends, and it seems that they need fuel for their car but have no money. They want us to pay some of the 130,000 we owe to buy fuel, but we have no cash. Luckily we have 20L of fuel in a jerry, and we sell that to them at the market price. Now there is a further problem, there is no money to buy diesel for the truck. As far as we can tell the driver’s wife organizes an IOU with the station. Now the main problem becomes apparent. It takes Soco a long time to translate - they’ve their mind and decided they don’t want to go to UB anymore. They will go there in two days, but for now they want to go to a small town 100km south east.
I return to the car to mull this over, but Stephen puts his foot down. He has his notepad from the day before, which clearly shows two dots and a line between them. Next to the line is written 600km. Above the first dot is written 100,000, and above the second is written UB and 130,000. There will be no second payment if we don’t get to UB today. After much discussion it appears the Hyundai will go to the other town with the luggage and the girls, and the truck will continue to UB. This means we lose Soco, our interpreter. She gives us a couple of slices of hard cheese as a parting gift. This is the same stuff we ate in the ger in Tsannagguur.
The driver is not happy about the UB situation, and it soon becomes apparent he wants to get there as soon as possible. The road changes back to a myriad of dirt tracks, which makes us suspicious that we’re not even going to UB. Our heading checks out on the compass though, so we remain hopeful. However the trucks new found speed combined with the dirt road is scary for us in the Suzuki. It bounces around, and at one point moves so much we think it’s going to go over the side with us in it. We shout at the driver and thankfully he slows. We stop 19km out of UB, and it appears they don’t want to go any further. After much discussion we head off again, finally reaching smooth bitumen. On the outskirts of UB we stop again, this time for around 30 minutes. It appears the truck can’t go into UB with the guys on the back, so they have to stay outside the city. We’re made to sit in the cab (inside it is pristine and we have to remove our shoes), and we continue.
The Adventurists have given next to no directions to the vehicle compound, so it’s hard for us to give instructions. However at 6pm we find it, and after some trouble the car in its sorry state is unloaded in the rally compound. The friction between us and the truck people continues, but eventually they take us to an atm that works (this takes several attempts), I pay them an extra 8,000 local buy the guys a new bottle of vodka, and they seem to leave content and happy. We still don’t know whether we loved them or hated them, and as to what they thought of us we’ll never know! At the end of the day they did bring us to UB, and their rate was cheap (not so cheap when you consider I already paid another truck).
Unloading the truck in the compound. The tyres are flat because they were let down to stop the car from bouncing off the truck. There was a strap holding the car down, but it repeatedly fell off before eventually wearing through and being abandoned. We were held responsible for the broken strap of course, and provided our tow rope in compensation.
Inside the compound we inspect the cars. There is Amanda the Panda and the Team Yorkshire Suzuki SJ that we met between Atryau Aktobe. Tim fixed the Team Yorkshire wheel bearing, and it’s good to see it went the distance. There is Yak to the Future’s Citroen 2CV. We meet them later at the pub. They were the only team this year to complete the northern road under their own steam. Unfortunately they too were unable to make the finish line as they hit a pothole at 4am on the entry to UB and punctured 3 tyres! They eventually had to pay for the return of their ipod at the ger in Tsagannuur, for which we owe them a beer. I am jealous of their northern route, especially considering our southern route proved a complete disaster. The Spanish Seat with the electrical problems has made it, but there is no sign of the slow moving Panda.
Stephen and I are suddenly free from our shackles. We have money, we can walk without having to worry about the truck leaving us behind, we can drink beers, we don’t have to drive! We buy an icecream! There is no one stealing our stuff or trying to wrestle. We were only on the truck for 26 hours, but it seems like a week. We are both bruised and battered.
We visit the Mongol Rally office, where we determine there is no problem with the importation of the car. Although Tim and I elected to keep the car at the end of the rally, the western Mongolian border was so slack with their paperwork, it made no difference. Apparently there is no active government in Mongolia at the moment, as they wait for the old government and the newly elected government to form a coalition. Anything above civil law is a bit sketchy, importation of cars being one of them. The western has let everyone through regardless, whereas not one Mongol rally car managed to cross at the Northern border! Teams had to abandon their cars there and continue by other means. This news means the Suzuki can be sold by the Adventurists for charity, and I should have no problems leaving the country.
UB is a crazy place tonight. They have just won their 1st Olympic gold medal ever, and everyone is celebrating. The streets are packed with cars driving around and around. The passengers are sitting on the window sills with their body outside, waving flags frantically, blowing horns, whistling, and yelling. As we walk along the street it seems every 10th person stops to shake our hand, and we congratulate them on a fine Olympic effort. Only two or three months ago there were riots in UB over the change in government. Obviously they are capable of feeling extremely passionate in both negative and positive directions. Tonight it’s euphoric, and it’s a special treat for us to be introduced to UB in this way.
We find a hotel and have a warm shower and drink an ice cold beer from the minibar. It’s the first time we’ve seen a shower or a proper bed for 10 days. Then it’s off to the official rally pub called Dave’s place for a couple of quiet ones with people we’ve along the way, followed by a well earned deep sleep.
