Videos

These videos were huge, so it’s split into three. The first two are of the travel between Ulaanbaataar and Barnaul, which has been roughly split around Tsetserleg. The third video is more of a 4WD’ing video where Cassie crossed most of the Bokhmoron river. Some people have struggled to watch the videos because they keep stopping. Just a tip: Click play, then click pause. Go make a coffee while the little grey bar gets ahead of the circle down the bottom. Once it’s a good inch or so ahead, you should be able to hit play again without any trouble. For those who want a bigger screen video, click on the ‘YouTube’ button in the bottom right of the video to go watch it there.

Barnaul

Barnaul is quite the happening place. Very clean and no mayhem.

Cassie was first to have a shower, I’m about to go next, but we have to rush because the laundry lady will be arriving any second to pickup our bag of filthy laundry. Neither of us have had a hot shower since Chita – Seriously, I don’t normally smell, but I can’t stand even my own presence right now. In UB we only had a hobo bath which is never as good when it comes to cleanliness. Two and a bit weeks – very embarrassing. And a week since our river bath which again, doesn’t seem to break down the filth as well as hot water.

Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/UBToBarnaul?authkey=Gv1sRgCMKPpZvXp5247gE

The three videos should be uploaded tonight so stay tuned.

100KM out of Barnaul

Drove for a bit today, good roads, beyond stupid drivers. So sick of them! Regardless of how high your spirits are in the morning, three wide on a two lane road gets you down by the end of the day. According to a book I just finished reading (ironically on Siberia):
-Russian man's average life expectancy is 59.
-Three and a half times as many people were dying in car accidents in Russia compared to Germany.
-Russian's consume twice the level of alcohol considered 'dangerous' by the World Health Organisation
-Russia's population is declining at a rate of 4% per year since 1993. In 8 years Russia's population will be below 100 Million

Spent all my time putting together video to share when we arrive at Barnaul tomorrow.
So far we have:
101 Cool photos ready to upload
10 minute video UB to Tes
~5 minute video Tes to Barnaul (Still compiling)
Altai is the Russian tourist mecca. It's nice to see tourism, the far eastern side of Russia sees no tourists it seemed.

"Back in the USSR"

Cassie:
Ok, so it's not called the USSR anymore, but we were trying to be clever by referencing a song title. Neither of us know the name of the person/band who sings it - can anyone shed any light? We're in the Altai region after crossing the Mongolian/Russia border yesterday afternoon. All up we estimate the border crossing took about 6 hours. You essentially have to cross two borders with each crossing which eats up the time. You have to exit one country and go through their bureaucracy then go to the next country's border to enter and go through their bureaucracy, all the while smiling and profusely thanking them at every separate stage for making your day hellish. Border crossings aren't hard, they're just long, tedious and boring. And when you're trying to cross on a Friday, stressful. I ended up having to fill out four customs forms at the Russian side because we made a "mistake" on the first ones (you need to fill out two customs forms - one original for them and one for us).
I say "mistake" in quotation marks because I filled it out exactly how the last Russian border wanted it completed, but it wasn't what this Russian border officer wanted to see. It was absolutely freezing at the border, had to be well below 10 degrees celsius and raining. At one stage the rain actually started to fall like snow! The wind had an awful bite to it too. I think our altitude at that point was around 2500m. All the border officers were in nice, heated sheds while all us plebs were lined up outside in the freezing cold rain and wind. It was like we were prisoners being punished as we're lining up for a bit of paper that would let us out past the high wire fences on probation, into "freedom". At the last office we had to line up at just before leaving the "compound" the lady was kind and half jokingly we stuck our hands and forearms through her window so that we could warm them. Thankfully she saw this as funny, it would've looked like we were trying to reach in an
d grab something from her desk. We were just desperate for warmth!

Anyway, we got through without any issues and the Mongolian exiting procedure was just as silly as the dance we had to do to get into the country.

Interesting story from yesterday morning, we nearly didn't make it to the Mongolian border. We got to the town of Tsagaannuur and headed in what we thought was the direction and out of nowhere a guy on a motorbike comes up beside us on the road gesturing for us to stop. Ok, hello, what's this. We were expecting some trouble if I'm honest because the town of Tsagaannuur looks like a rough and tough, dust bowl of a border town and we clearly stuck out as tourists heading to the border. He then proceeded to tell us in broken english that this is not the road to the border and that we should follow him and he will show us the way. Hmmm, I was a bit scared if I'm honest with you. We hadn't even driven 10km and I sensed trouble in the air. In my defense, I think everyone reading this would've found the situation a bit suspect. But what choice did we have really, it's likely he was telling the truth and he wasn't going to leave without us so we had to follow him. Worst case we could
just turn the car around. So through this dust bowl town we drive and sure enough, he led us to a main road on the other side of the town. You beauty! He then stopped for a bit of a chat, wanted some money, smokes or vodka from us for his troubles. Ahhh, so that's the catch. Unfortunately for him, we had changed all our local currency back in Ulaangom and neither of us smoke or drink. He then poked his head into the car to see what else we had but couldn't see anything much because we had the solar shades up on the back windows. In the end he got on his mobile phone and "called" someone, told us, yep, you're right to go now and so we said our goodbyes and headed off expecting there to be a roadblock further up with his mates blocking our path. Hello bullbar if that was to be the case. But no, I checked our mobile phone just after we said bye to him thinking wow, do we have mobile service here? Because what a miracle that would be because I haven't seen any mobile towers (th
ey're very obvious in Mongolia - literally in a town and much lower than our ones in Australia). Nope, no mobile service which means he wasn't talking to anyone on his phone. I think the guy was just trying a last ditch effort to get something from us by making it look like he had done even more to help us. I would've given him something for his troubles, but we didn't have anything that he wanted. We did give him a bag of lollies but he handed them back.

We met a Dutch couple at the border who had entered Mongolia at the Tsagaannuur border and were exiting from the same border at the same time as us. They were traveling in a Mercedes Smart Car ForTwo (worth Googling it if you're unsure what it is). Needless to say, they got to Olgiy which is about 208km from the Tsagaannuur border and turned around. Their car couldn't cope with the roads. We were amazed that this was their choice of car but gave them the much deserved kudos for even trying it! They then proceeded to tell us that they originally set off on this adventure on a scooter, had an accident with a truck in Ukraine, headed home to recover, kitted up their Smart Car at home for the drive and headed off again. What the!? They were absolutely mad but really lovely people. Sad story was, we were with them the entire way through the Mongolian border, encouraging each other through each step - real border buddies. Got through the Mongolian border sweet, no problems. Got to
the halfway Russian checkpoint (yes, it's crazy but they have a halfway checkpoint not far after the Mongolian border where they check your visa and passport before you get to the actual border). We're lined up behind the gate, the Dutch couple go through first because they were about three cars ahead of us in the line up. Then about 5mins later, they swing their car around and come back through the gate! They pulled up alongside us with long faces and I said guys, what's going on, what's wrong, why are you heading back to Mongolia!? They explained that they thought they had a double entry visa into Russia but it turns out they only had a single entry. They had to go to Ulaanbaatar to the Russian embassy there and get another Russian visa. Our hearts sank for them. We offered them water and any other provisions they may need but they declined. Graeme suggested they drive to Olgiy and fly to Ulaanbaatar because the roads are just too rough for their little car. My mind keeps
going to them. I hope they're ok and are keeping their chins up.

From the Dutch couple and another couple from Germany who were also our border buddies all the way through, we learnt that we had actually driven the difficult way through Mongolia. We went the northern route through Ulaangom on the A16 but all the tourists seem to go the more southern route and take the middle main road which is the A07 into Olgiy because it has a bridge across the massive river we had to cross. Doh! Oh well, I'm going to blow our own trumpet and say I think we deserve kudos for doing it the hard way. It was bloody hard on the car, body and spirit!

Mongolia was just amazing. A day would yield the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. It's a tough country to traverse because many of the roads are rough and it's so darn difficult to navigate. But my goodness, you're rewarded with the beautifully warm smile of a local and stunning vistas. By far the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life. At numerous points the beauty seriously moved me to tears.

In answer to your question Nora, I don't know if there's bears in Mongolia. I have read that there's wolves. I was so hoping to see one, or even hear one - how spooky and cool would that be! But alas, no. We were really keen to see a bear in Russia, and because of all the forest fires in the area we were in we thought for sure they would be forced out of the depths of the forest towards the edges where we were likely to see one. But again, no.

The Altai region in Russia is really beautiful. Today we've seen snow capped mountains, massive fast flowing rivers, huge rocky mountains, driven awesome mountainous roads and have finally camped alongside a river. Unfortunately we couldn't find a spot where we can access the water because it's holiday season in Russia and every Tom, Dick and Harry is out camping in this area. Damn tourists! Haha. I can see why the Russians flock here, it is a lovely place for a camping holiday and we would have our pick of amazing camp spots but they're all taken. It's actually nice to see the Russians holidaying and enjoying their country. The people who have recently pulled up and camped nearby to us occasionally pump up their car stereo to it's limit which is annoying but what can you do. Hope they bust their speakers?

We're 3 hours behind home time now. From here we're heading up to Barnaul over the next couple of days where we'll get a hotel, much needed shower and wifi hopefully. My hair is so gross it just stays in place when I take my hairband out of an evening. Ewwww. Thankfully we were able to bathe in a river in Mongolia and wash our hair on Monday. That feels like a lifetime ago as I type this on Saturday evening! You've just gotta roll with it and hope you don't stink too much when you pop into a town for lunch and some supplies. In Mongolia it was fine because we couldn't smell any worse than the nomadic farmers who stink to high heaven of cow poo, or sheep, yak, camel or goat poo - whichever you prefer.

The drive up to Barnaul is going to be a very slow, casual one because we can't enter Kazakhstan until the 15th because that's the entry date on our visas. We had to guess the date way back at the start of this year when we were applying for all of our visas. Thankfully we were fairly spot on with guessing the dates. We've been pretty tired these past two days so this will be some great forced "take it easy" time.

It's wonderful to be back on tar roads again before we hit the dirt again in Kazakhstan. I can't help but feel the toughest part of the trip is over. I do realise that the adventure will throw up different kinds of challenges as we go along, but hey, we've endured Siberia and Mongolia and we're still smiling and not ready to go home, surely that's readied us for anything else that is to come.

Graeme:
First things first - I need to clear up some confusion with the 'Altanbulag Border Scammer' Video. Just prior to leaving Mongolia, we were pulled over at an offical looking check point, with a very official looking man with MTA badge. He asked us to see our tax receipt. Cassie kept asking what he was after but I knew it all along. He was after our receipt that the 'scammer' provided. We showed him, he said, thanks very much and sent us on our way. IT WASN'T A SCAM!!! OMG I have been snickering about that for days now. I'll need to make the video private so we can all have a laugh about it, but it's not open to the world. A couple we met didn't pay on entry because they thought it was a scam and had to pay the exact same ammount (10,0000T) on exit.

Thanks to Dad and Warren for the suggestions on the dust. I think the problem is a result of a design modification I made when doing the fit out. In the back of these things, as with most cars, there are usually a pair of vents towards the back of the car that let air out when you put air in (like front windows open, closing a door or fan running on fresh air). When renewing the side panels in the back I deliberately covered these vents to stop a draft on cold nights. This is demonstrated when we have the fan on fast, a squeal, a bit like a baloon can be heard from the rear door seals as the air forces through them. I do agree, a little bit of positive pressure probably helps the dust senario, but I'll have to see what works best from your tips because our setup might be a little different from normal. Thank you.

I don't have much to add. Altai is beautiful, but oddly difficult to photograph. You just need to be here. We've seen so many overland travellers, all from europe coming down the highway today. In the realm of 50 cars? 40 of them would be landcruisers (2 troop carriers, 20 prados, 38 80/100 series) remaining few were land rovers or misc like F150's. Nothing entering Mongolia was 2WD.
It's been relaxing charging and cleaning all the camera gear.
This morning, 2 minutes into driving, there was an odd sound. Pulled over, it was the flapping of a rubber guard that keeps mud out of the engine bay against the drivers side wheel. The push clip had broken, so a cable tie and it was all good. Investigating this noise brought to my attention a few drops of coolant on the bottom radiator hose. Tightened them all up, all good now. As Cassie might have mentioned, last night was freezing, last time it was really cold at home I had the same issue. Damn new hoses. I should have just left the old ones on and carried new ones instead of replacing them ;-)

Oh, one thing that was staggeringly cool to me, was recreating one of the photos in the Long Way Round book! Do I sound obsessed much?! It was a pretty ordinary photo anyway, but I knew it had to be on this road. Sure enough, we looked for half the day using components of the photo such as the big power pole on the left hand side of the road, the 40kph sign, the funny trees etc. It turned out Cassie spotted it from a pattern on the fence. Inside I was adamant this couldn't be the place... one tree was about half the size, a whole new strip of street lights, different signage and fresh tar made for a different looking scene. She was right, and we got the photo. Niceeee!

Russian Border

Woah. Just a heads up, we're at the final Russian frontier. We've been through the Mongolian border, the weird Russian mid way border and we're maybe 6 cars back from the gate. They are at lunch. Both of us are stressed to the hilt because if we're not processed this afternoon, we will be stuck here until Monday morning! Reality says we will be through this afternoon, but that doesn't stop us being concerned. Today a lovely couple from the Netherlands got turned back in a smart car at the Russian mid way border. They only had single entry visas which they must have consumed. They need to go to UB to get a Russian visa. Woah!!! Ugh. Oh well, the spot tracker will reveal our location as I very much doubt we'll be making any posts from here.

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.

There's a road!

Cassie:
Today has been a bit adventurous. First of all in the morning we found ourselves not lost, but shall we say not exactly on the right path towards the town of Baruunturuun. These roads are so confusing. You'll be on what is essentially the "main road" or the "highway" which is just a series of dirt tracks then gradually, bit by bit without you even noticing you'll be turned and heading in the wrong direction. Well, that happened a total of about three times today. The first one was a doozy. I was driving at the time and we ended up going down dirt tracks that literally would end, I'd keep driving, hoping that they would start again and sure enough we'd see something that started to resemble a road again. Some bits were a bit hairy and it really tested me and nerves. At one point when I was getting to my wits end I blurted out "Where's the .......... road!?". Well, today really pushed me. This country is difficult to navigate, even with a GPS. No wonder we've had locals stop us
and ask if they're heading in the right direction. You could spend an entire day going in the wrong direction, end up at a town and realise you've been going south all day when you should've been going west.

This afternoon when we were about 50km or so from Ulaangom, we thought we were deviating off the road we were meant to be on so started heading down another road that ended up being terrible and was getting worse. So, instead of a repeat of what happened in the morning, Graeme just cut across the open grassland (which was rough as guts!) and not before time we saw a road and both said at the same time "There's a road!". Pretty much how you have to navigate at times. We did that maybe three times today as we found we were heading in the wrong direction.

We past a fellow traveller today. Not long after we came out of the middle of nowhere and found the real road again this morning, we came across a lady from the US cycling to Ulaangom. What a goer. Just after I was thinking, far out, that was some difficult off-road driving earlier this morning, really tested my nerves and skill, here she is just happily cycling along with the sun beating down on her. We asked if she needed any water or other provisions but she just said, you know what, there's only about 40km or so to the next town so I think I'll be ok thanks. She only had maybe two litres of water on her if she was lucky, and it was a hot day today. But she just wasn't perturbed, just cruising along.

Anyway, we made it to Ulaangom today. Had a bite to eat, tried to find a hotel but couldn't find one with wifi so couldn't be stuffed, figured we may as well camp rather than not only have no internet but risk no hot water to boot. It's been a huge day and we're both exhausted. Graeme's up on the roof of the car at the moment because the bottle of brake fluid we had in one of the boxes has leaked. Apparently the lid came off. How a screw top lid comes off I'm at a loss. These roads are rough but we've been on rougher, tougher roads in Russia without this happening. Ironically, we even checked all of that yesterday and just commented on how great it is that everything in the boxes has held up so well and hasn't leaked. It seems we spoke a day too soon. It's also leaked onto the car so hopefully Graeme can clean it enough so that it doesn't corrode the paint. Ugh. Some days are very tiring.

Another thing that's a bit of a pain in the neck is the back doors are letting in a lot of dust. More than ever and we can't figure out how on earth so much is getting in. Literally everything in the car has a fine coating of dust on it. It's frustrating as hell and we've been sneezing a lot these past few days because of it. We drove on much dustier roads in Russia and didn't have nearly this amount of dirt in the car. Ugh again. All I can think of is that all the rough roads we've driven on have simply shaken the back doors to crap or the seals need replacing.

We've camped just outside the town and will re-enter it again tomorrow. We need to go to a bank to change the currency. Hopefully we can change it into Euros. You can't exchange Mongolian, Kazakhstan or Russian currency outside the country. Bugger. Fingers crossed we can change it tomorrow. This is the last town large enough between here and the border where we have any hope of doing this.

I realise I sound like I'm complaining a lot in this post but sometimes you just have to get all of this stuff out so you can build a bridge and get over it. We've really loved our time in Mongolia. I'm only complaining because it must be past my bedtime!

Not long now until we're back in Russia. We certainly haven't rushed through Mongolia which is nice. We've spent time taking pictures, taking in the serenity and exploring the towns we came across. Even still it's only taken us about a week to get through it. There really hasn't been much to see this side of Mongolia because it's very dry and barren. The population seems to have thinned out since Moron. We've had the most awesome camps through Mongolia, even though tonight's one isn't very glamorous as it's near the town's cemetery and tip. Nice. Not sure what the locals were thinking with the placement of these two things literally side by side.

We're aiming to be at the border by Friday which will be easily done from here, even if we spend some time in Ulaangom tomorrow. I'll be sad to say goodbye to Mongolia but am so glad that we've had the opportunity to spend time in such an amazing country.