September 24

A tough start again this morning across a river bed of rocks and slush.  After a couple of hours, the weather turned for the worse, we had to deal with an even stronger head wind as well as snow for a point in time.  The pass still seemed a long way away.  A steep incline then began, the snow which fell turned the road to slush making it impossible to ride so we pushed our bikes up the hill.  Not surprisingly, the weather kept get progressively worse the higher we went.  The wind was horrendous, the snow was hitting us sideways and it must have been well below freezing.  After a while we decided to leave our bikes and walk to see if the summit was close.  We couldn't tell how much further it was and we were getting into dangerous territory staying there any longer than necessary so we decided to push the bikes back down.  We made it to some gers and the locals let us warm up inside for an hour or so until the sun appeared.  We decided to have another crack at it and although the weather improved, it was a struggle to the reach the top.  We were fairly low on energy but we had to push on if we were going to find a reasonable place to camp out of the cold.  There wasn't as much downhill as we expected, just lots of mud, snow, slush and inevitable river crossings.  We had hoped to see some gers so we could sleep inside and warm up, but we didn't see a thing for hours.  It was dark by the time we saw a massive rock which looked to offer some resistance to the wind so we decided to stop and camp there.  It was icy cold, our feet and shoes were soaked.  We tried everything to warm up but it was impossible.  The tent was on rocky, sloped ground which made sleeping extremely difficult.  It was an interesting day.

The mobile shop

Some of the better road

The weather appears to be changing...

Tasty snack

A great view from the top of the pass