Crossing the Aldan River

Graeme:
Yesterday was grand. Keen readers may spot we miscalculated the distance to Kandagya, but that's ok, we had figured that would only take a few hours, the rest of the time would be spent stocking up fuel, food, kafe in Kandagya. There were two stretches of roadworks that held us up a total of maybe 4 hours. Crazy eh! With the miscalculation on the distance, combined with the roadworks meant we missed the evening barge across the Aldan river. We had enough buffer for one of those to blow out, but not both. Oh well.

I think we arrived at the barge at around 2230 local time, which sounds like a horribly long day, but it was well punctuated with a sleep and roadworks. Pity we didn't combine them both, as we had the sleep about 20 minutes before the roadworks. doh!

Waiting for the barge meant sleep was intermittent at best, to the point Cassie felt sick at some point but thankfully slept it off. Cars and trucks coming and going all night. Rain however was consistent and although pleasant to listen to, it meant keeping the windows closed which means humidity rises and oxygen falls in our own little micro climate. The barge left at around 6AM with the usual barge rage.

Todays driving has been rubbish. I'm writing this as we bounce along between somewhere named Churchgha (totally rough, I can hardly read the screen from the bumps) and the town on the opposite bank to Yakutsk. Sorry, as I write this, I realise this is so devoid of information it's hardly worth reading. The first half was big smooth rocks submerged with gigalitres of rain, a bit like driving 60kph down a river. That wasn't so bad. Next came fairly normal dirt road, but laced with missing sections one foot wide, spanning one lane due to crazy levels of erosion. Thankfully we didn't hit any.
Then slop. Nothing but thick black slop. At least one hour of today has been spent with us sideways to some degree. And it's not just us, everyone. The clue we should have noticed is all the oncoming cars were black. The next four or so hours has been hell. Sloppy mud as before, but with a steep road camber. Not cool when you have to pass an oncoming car. If you stop, you slide off and down into a swamp, so it's a delicate operation of both slowing as you go past, then applying copious amounts of throttle to get back up to the crown of the road again - sideways as usual. That wasn't the worst bit. All this, combined with the worst road underneath which is completely invisible through the slop. So, you can't slow down, you can't go faster, you can't stop.

I think the biggest shock is that none of this was that bad a week ago! The road crews must just be working every day to keep up with the wear and tear.

As I write this now the road has improved. No slop, dry and rough however. Is this boring talking about a ROAD SURFACE?
lol excuse those caps, I hit the caps lock key whilst trying to type. That's reality TV kids!

Today has been visually stunning (ugh, I'm repeating myself), and looks a lot like we imagine Mongolia will be. Rolling grass hills, lots of random unfenced livestock. Very pretty. We're finding most days we're seem to only hold one camera, so it's either the still camera or the video camera. Today was certainly a still camera day. Hopefully they turn out ok.

Part two: We're now at camp. We stopped at this spot on the way here as it was good to wash and quiet.
We've had a knocking noise in the passenger footwell which I assumed was something wrong with a shock absorber. The bottom neoprene bush has disintegrated which made it rattle on the up stroke. Should be no problem to get one tomorrow. That's all folks.