Dressed in shirt and shorts we made a start on the first days riding, we were soon to realise it was overly ambitious dressing so lightly. The first climb out of town was cold and then an icy wind picked up which was going straight through us, it was a sign of things to come for the rest of the trip. The road was bitumen in places which was a huge surprise and it looks like it is being developed fairly quickly, well at least for Mongol standards. The roads are so bad we assumed a five hour car trip would be cut by at least three and a half hours with the help of a sealed road. On the gravel road out we were keeping pace with a van fully loaded with passengers, mainly because the driver was stopping every few kilometres. We met three people in the final stages of the Mongol rally, they told us they were coming last, two of them had hitched a ride with this vehicle as theirs had broken down. Apparently the roads ahead got worse pretty quickly. The Russian side was said to be spectacular, but we were told to look out for the Russian prostitutes trying to drug and rob foreigners.
We got our first taste of the steppe and the confusing roads snaking their way into the horizon. They go in every direction, asking locals hardly helps as they simply wave their arm in the general direction of the next town. We made it to Dongoy about 70km from Tsetserleg. It had a shop so we loaded up on more supplies, but there wasn't much else in town. We were offered a lift to Tariat (~100km away) for about $8 by a local guy in a one tonne Korean pickup truck you see everywhere. Hard offer to refuse, and it allowed us to have a couple of beers on the way after a pretty hard day. It was a 5 hour drive on horrible roads and we somehow managed to find the guesthouse of a local lady named Tunga who is the local English teacher. It was quite late and we were forced to get to sleep with the rest of the family in their lounge room fairly quickly. We would have preferred more than a couple of tins of beer and a few biscuits for dinner but at least it was a warm place to sleep.
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| Good gravel road to start |
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| Pick a road |
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| Stoked with some sun and decent road |
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| The first of many water crossings |
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