Thursday

Vegimite toast was the breakfast today. mmm. After a good sleep in, we headed into town for the markets. We arrived early which yielded no crowds and no feeling of pickpockets.
The Ulaangom markets had a few cool things, but mostly just cheap chinese rubbish that every vendor is sellling. Cmon people, hand made is the key... and differntiate! It's like in Russia. There will be 6 roadside vendors within 50M of one another, all selling honey and only honey! You can't differentiate on price alone - no one wins there.
Scored the three 'Hattigs' or sashes. They are sooo nice. Not perfect which is all the better. Gold, blue and white! Still not finding any cool gifts for anyone, and because we're not in China it didn't seem appropriate buying them as gifts from Mongolia.
Awesome people use dot points - BAM:
-We decided it would be better weight wise, and cheaper to buy fuel in Russia as opposed to filling up in Ulaangom. We left with two 1/2 tanks.
-We changed virtually all of our Tugriks back into USD at a bank. It took about 15 minutes! Passport scans, numerous weird manual counts of the money.
-We used free WiFi in the town square to check email.
-We paid our road toll (500T) and said goodbye to Ulaangom. Note to travellers, keep a tiny bit of Tugriks left for stuff like this. Borders will take the local currency of either side, and USD.

A left turn after Ulaangom puts you on the A16, it's easy to miss the turn off as you're mesmerised by a tar road. It leads way in the the distance to a long enduring climb to 1980M, all in third/fourth gear. Perfectly straight except for the top bit. About 200M from the top we pulled over to let the engine cool down a bit. The temperature gauge was somewhere between half way and 3/4 which is warm enough for my liking. Within 30 seconds of stopping it was back to normal.

The last few hours had encapsulated everything that Mongolia had been over the past week or so. Like a compressed time sample, we did mountain passes, trees, open grass lands, rocky sections. Brilliant. Even if it meant we took a wrong turn and ended up crossing an epic 2560M mountain pass, complete with clouds. The car was not surprisingly underpowered at this altitude, but as we plateaued and we had a chance to accelerate, did the misfire reveal itself - a lot! 2000RPM took about half throttle to achieve with bellowing smoke. Whilst Cassie was looking at a sign at the pass, I thought I'd check something. This engine has a bit of trick called a High Altitude Compensator which from what I suspect is designed to lean off the fuel as a result of lower available oxygen to prevent oil consumption and smoke. Without the internet I cannot be certain! I had a look just above the injector pump at this bit of gear (or what I thought was it). It had a pressure actuator which even when
adjusted one way or the other, still didn't result in any improvment. Oh well, who really cares. We descended the other side of the pass and by 1500M the problem was gone.

Local mining had changed the course of the road, after heading the wrong way up a valley, we got directions from one of the miners.
After leaving the mine site, we drove beneath the powerlines - always a safe option. At one point the road was eroded by about 1 foot. Sick of back tracking, we edged down it. Oh well, it made for some fun video. The natural (if not infuriating) process of roads dividing left us on a single track where there were six previously. It opened onto a piece of brilliantly flat desert ground. We drove for maybe 15 minutes in one direction, then a turn, then thirty minutes to where the A16 should be, then about another 30 back. The route did have us cross several little river crossings, but in reality they were more like large puddles with a tiny current in the middle.

Our last stint on the A16 lead us to 'Bokhmoron' which was maybe 20KM south of where we wanted to be, but it was supposedly linked to another town via a 'road', so we chose to stick with this route instead of finding our way directly north on no roads. We weaved our way through the fenced suburbs to a road which was heading in our general direction. We turned a few swampy corners and the huge, single stream of river revealed itself. Nope, can't cross here.
Our second attempt of leaving the town was met with dense bushy shrubs scratching the car, some marshy mud, and a distinct dead end. DAMMIT! Another 15 minutes wasted.

After the third attempt of leaving the town, we followed some tracks through the rocks in hope of crossing the set we needed. It was too rocky to drive off the tracks, so every KM was spent with our eyes pealed trying to locate these elusive tracks. We did find some, but they were seldom used. At least they were heading in the direction we wanted. We were elated to reach the river marked on our map, but only after crossing two streams, did the remaining six streams reveal themselves. It was time to wade the remaining 6 streams. They were flowing fast, but clear of debris. With only an hour or two of good daylight left, I chose to wade them in what I was wearing as opposed to using the waders. Stupidly I was carrying our brand new video camera in my hand, in hindsight I should have put it in a waterproof case. Thankfully I didn't drop it or fall over. That, and my boots are still sopping wet, but it's ok. Cassie drove maybe four of the streams like a trooper, but the last two
I chose to drive. I don't say that like a wanker, I just didn't want any accident to be on her conscience... that and she hates river crossings even as a passenger, so as a driver they are torture. I put the video camera down on a rock maybe an inch higher than the rest and waded back over. We crossed without incident and although the shallower bits were caught by the camera on the other side, the deepest bit was captured by our dash camera. It was lucky I put it on the rock, because the footage revealed the water washed around the camera... that was close.

After our epic river crossing we were not treated to a road on the other side for quite some time. Once we found it again, we were worried at what the next two rivers on the map represented. I was concerned that there was no fuel where we were so if we had to go back it meant crossing the epic river again. We were down to two 1/4 tanks of fuel which is about my limit mentally. Thankfully the last two rivers were ok. One was two sandy islands and one was more like a green, sometimes swampy depression in an otherwise arid landscape.

The road did the ol' disappearing trick for the last time. Fed up with this we just set course for a waypoint and drove straight towards it, only dodging big rocks for what felt like half an hour. That would be my tip to future travellers, don't worry too much about following maps. Just set a waypoint way in the distance and let the land reveal a route. The roads are way more intuitive than the map is accurate.

After the nightmare that was navigation today, one ray of hope was the promised valley. A steep cutting which when we found it would mean the point at which we could no longer get lost as it went all the way to Tsagaannuur. We found it and it lead us to the most amazing fairy tale grassy valley. Sheer grey/brown gravel cliffs terminated in a bouncy soft grass valley floor complete with a crystal clear stream maybe 1M wide. In fact, we suspect it's the valley pictured from 07:45 to 11:30 in episode 5 of Long Way Round. The only thing missing was the fairly new looking power line which runs through the valley. Don't worry, you'd hardly notice it when you come here.

The kids in this valley are wise to the 'travelers passing through will absolutely stop and give us lollies' trick. At one stage, we drove sooo quietly and sure enough, little bright dots on the horizon would emerge from Ger's and run towards the road. Seriously 300M away! They are like mosquitoes in their tourist detection skills! Future travelers be sure to bring a big bag of lollies.

Among the 50 kids that waved us through the valley only one was naughty. He threw a rock at the car! It was just fortunate that the one he picked up was only big enough to throw about half the distance between us. I'm not sure if he'd do it again, as he got the shock of his lifetime when I yelled at him! I guess that's how we all grew up. He looked maybe 14-17 and is the single piece of beligerence we've seen at all in this country. This will no doubt disappear in our memories as it's only the tiniest of the experiences otherwise brilliant in this country.
One thing I noticed when we handed the children lollies, is that they have such rough hands, like rocks are their only toys! Maybe they are all rock throwers ;-)

It's been impossible to camp because of the proximity to everyone else. We didn't have the energy to entertain anyone whatsoever so we drove as far as we could and camped. Even then, five minutes later two guys arrived on motorbikes. We just peeked through the shades, nothing more - sorry guys.

Unable to sleep we sat up around 3AM and made dot points of what happened on Thursday. It's amazing to think this was just one day. Without the hopelessness of ab-circle-pro commercials to drone us back to sleep we had cold milk and biscuits and watched our videos from the day. Our plan for today (Friday) is to cross the border, find a good camp spot in Russia and rest. Thursday was immensely difficult and stunning all at once.

PS. I think the Long Way Round guys had to go south of the lake, and not cross where we did. Obviously nothing has changed with the route. The A16 is only passable by 4WD and preferably with about 10 of them.

Right now it's 8AM and we're itching to go to the border. We're running a backup of our laptop at 0730 in case it gets confiscated through some paperwork catastrophe which is about my only fear right now.