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Published: June 12th 2008
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(Day 66 on the road)From Ulaan Baatar, I left on a week-long trip into the heart of the vast Gobi Desert, the largest desert in Asia and the fourth-largest in the world. I set off with two Finnish brothers (Mikka and Mikko) and a German couple (Eva and Daniela). And of course our very cool and competent driver cum mechanic, Mishka.
The vehicle of choice in the harsh desert is a very sturdy, Russian-made van, which is 100%!m(MISSING)echanic, so no fancy electronics that can boggle up. As many cars in the desert, and certainly all the tourist vans, are actually of the same type, this also means that you can quite easily get spare parts from other drivers. We had a few breakdowns (the first flat tire just 3h after leaving Ulaan Baatar); Mishka fixed them all, and also helped other broken-down cars that we passed. I guess in this inhospitable environment this is the only way to go.
The road out of Ulaan Baatar got notably worse just ten minutes outside of the city, and after another ten minutes we left the paved road altogether. We would not see roads again for the next 7 days -
apparently though, the tracks in the Gobi are some of the best in the country, but I thought they were plain awful. The average speed was about 30km/ h, though at times Mishka would go much faster than that, resulting in us being periodically thrown all across the van. I am quite proud to say that I still managed to sleep for quite a bit during the long hours we spent driving every day, despite the terrible state of the tracks!
The trip took us south of Ulaan Baatar and then in a big western loop through some of the highlights of the Gobi, including a monastery demolished under the Soviet rule of the country, some awesome limestone formations, an ice valley and giant sand dunes. The nights were always spent at traditional gers of a local family, who also provided us with dinner (always mutton) and breakfast (almost always dry biscuits). Every three days we hit a small village, where the first stop was always at the public bath house to wash off the dust of the desert. On day seven, I left the group to catch a public bus back to Ulaan Baatar, as I still had
to sort out my Chinese Visa. The rest of the group continued for another two days.
Well, there is a whole lot more I could write about Gobi, but you get a much better feel of this huge desert by looking at the pictures I took. I have included a few here, but the rest is, as usual, on my pictures page. Have a look if you are interested. What you will see on the pictures is that Gobi is not a sandy desert as you would expect, but rather rocky scrub-land. In fact, only 3% of this huge desert (1500km by 800km) is made up of sand. It is also expanding fast, mostly into norther China, which is, amongst other things, partly due to deforestation by the Chinese. The Chinese have recently started some various measures to combat this desertification (maybe you have heard of the "Green Wall of China", a huge stretch of newly planted trees), but so far with very limited success. If you have been to Beijing you have probably witnessed the frequent dust storms there and in other places in northern China. To finish this off, the Gobi is a comparatively cold desert, with
a yearly average temperature of just three degree, but reaching very extreme temperatures in winter (up to -40 degrees) and also summer (up to +50 degrees).
Next stop: Ulaan Baatar (Mongolia).
To view my photos, have a look at
pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete
book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).
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Ren
non-member comment
mongolia...
Hey Ben Just been reading your Mongolian blog. I know it was way at the start of your journey, but I was wondering given your experiences there if you were designing a two week trip - what would you recommend/not recommend? I know you may not have much time to reply now, but no rush...it's for a possible trip in 2011. Safe travels :) Ren