Monday, August 6, 2012

All roads lead to joy

Sitting in the front seat of the car, trying to recount today. It's all been one beautiful blur.
We started early as we had a terrific sleep last night. I'd say it's a combination of a cool night and blocking out the light with our solar shades. We've been reluctant to use them because it's a 10 minute ordeal each day to put them on or pack them away. In Mongolia however, we figured we didn't need visibility out the rear and side windows, so as a result we've been leaving them on. 90KM of our drive today was brilliant tar. It also happened to be when it was pissing with rain. We made hay while the sun shone. We did 280KM which suggests to me that 200KM is a comfortable expectation in Mongolia. We had a lengthy lunch complete with coffee's beside a silent highway.

In response to Tom's comment about how it's about time we did some 4WD'ing, well... today it all got a workout. I am at a loss as to how cars are traveling this route. When I say route, this is most certainly the main road - It's the A0902. Sections today had us a foot deep in sludge and slosh... for usually around 100M at a time. My only explanation is that they know the sections that snake around the mountains, whereas we're just taking the largest route, usually straight through the guts of it.

Two sets of children made up the roadside vendors today. The first set were two sisters (maybe 8,6) and their brother (maybe 2!). They were selling milk no doubt fresh from the cow in plastic coke bottles. They didn't have lids, so if a big batch of raw milk didn't appeal, the fact the 2yo was sucking on one of the bottles made us confident in our 'nope' decision. We gave them 500T for the privilege of taking thier photo. The second set of vendors were two brothers, perhaps 8-9 had a jar of some kind of dark berry. They were quick to climb on the car and as children do, they effortlessly asked if they could have our tin of pringles? Nah. OK, how about the mobile phone? Um, nope. Camera? Nope. What about that camera?. No. Here, have a bag of lollies. They climbed off and were on there way. I got some photos of them too, but I had the wrong lens on, so I was about 3M outside the passenger door shooting across the cab at them hanging in the window talking to Cassie.

The front diff is weeping oil around the back side where the pinion gear enters the housing. There is maybe 8 bolts on here and about 6 of them were oily. Not suprisingly, the ones that were not weeping were tight enough, the ones that were weeping could use a full turn tightening. I suspect this has fixed it, but we now need some differential oil. If we were stuck, I'm sure engine oil would do the job, but I think we'll just leave the hubs unlocked until we get to stages where we absolutely need 4WD. We could backtrack all of 5KM to a town and no doubt get some, but Moron is about 100KM away and a lot larger, so we'll get some there.

We watched a car today traverse a staggeringly technical section which criss-crossed beneath overhead lines. He went back and forth, turning around heaps in this front wheel drive car. TWICE we returned to our car to go and help him out of what seemed like a dire situation (motionless with mud and water above the front spoiler), but when we'd look back, he'd somehow got it moving again. They came over, offered us some assumed alcohol from a big 10L yellow plastic container which was politely declined. Out of astonishment, they gestured 'we just came over to say hi'... YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO CROSS THAT?! We get the impression they were just out for a drive as they stopped and chatted to another car down the road, obviously in no hurry.

We were treated to a sunset that defies words. That really is all I can say about it.
Dinner was bacon, eggs and tomato. Ohhhh how good it was. We've not had that meal in ohhh so long.

We took 250 pictures today which sounds absurd I know. To make things worse, that was just the still camera! Half the problem with viewing photos on laptops, is I don't know if the exposure of the photos is correct. Tilt the screen one way, they look too bright, tilt it the other way and they look dark. I can only hope some of ours turned out ok.

I'll probably post this tomorrow night now, as it's nearing 10PM and it's pitch black outside. Good evening.

Position: 12-08-05 20:57:05 +0800 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=49.46608,101.4185&q=49.46608,101.4185&z=16
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