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Published: December 7th 2011
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Today would see our tour end and we would return back to Ulaanbaatar. A relatively straight forward affair you would have thought, however not when your driver gets pulled over by the police and it turns out that he doesn't even have a driver's license.
So our driver Jackie was escorted via police car to some town 30 minutes away. Whilst we all sat in the minivan by the roadside and waited it out, completely clueless as to how long this palaver was going to take. But you’re pretty much guaranteed if it's on Asian times then it's not going to be a quick five.
A good one hour into the big wait and I was so bored that I couldn't even be bothered to read anymore, to bored to read. Jess was also reading, Karin and Ellie were talking utter smack, Francesca was jiving to some tunes on her MP3 player and Jean Luca was staring at my hair. This triggered a spontaneous movement, I had to get out, I grabbed the volleyball and went outside into the desert to kick its head in.
After 20 minutes I was bored and returned to the minivan. Everything had
fallen silent within and I couldn't quite work out if there had been some sort of argument. But the silence was welcome, I'd just about had enough of everyone's chuntering by now. People get tedious after a while, their too repetitive.
It was then that I declared that we un-tip our driver due to his irresponsible behavior. We had all initially placed a tip in a pot and were going to issue it to him upon our arrival back in UB. However with the 'Un-tip' procedure in force everyone was in agreement and everyone got their respective tips back. And with the 3 hour waiting around mark slowly approaching it felt like a well rounded and justified decision.
A hundred or so meters down the road there was a policeman stood outside a building, this wasn't where our driver was taken but I thought at least the policeman might know what the hell was going on with our driver. For all we knew he could have been banged up for 30 years, perhaps as well as having no driver’s license they discovered some illicit content on the hard drive of his Amstrad. And so I felt it just
to make my 2nd declaration of the hour. 'I declare that the lesbians commence with the scissoring'. Oh no wait, that wasn't what I said, that was just a passing thought. I declared that we have a rock, paper, scissors tournament to see who should go and ask the copper what's going on.
The tournament was short and sweet, I lost in the first round getting mashed by a coalition of paper which imminently put me through to the loser’s final against Ellie. There I fisted her a treat with the ol' rock, I was off the hook. Ellie being the most mature of the group would be doing the rightful deed. The rest of us would just be sitting back and enjoying the show.
The policeman had now re-entered the building that he was stood outside of, a police station of sorts I would presume, but not giving to much away from its exterior. Ellie entered the den. 15 minutes later and she had failed to return. So another round of rock, paper, scissors was in full effect to see who would be next to venture into the policeman's domain. It was all over in one round, Karin opting for scissors (naturally) and the rest of the party opting for rock (add quirky pun here).
So off Karin went, into the unknown. 10 minutes or so later she also failed to return. The Canucks were dropping like flies. In my head I suggested that Jess would now have to scissor Francesca but nobody replied. I got up to get out of the van. 'You gonna see what's going on?' inquired Jess.
'No, I'm just going for a piss' I replied.
'Oh'.
When I returned from having a slash, something that must have taken all of about 30 seconds there was some commotion over by the minivan and everyone acted as if I had taken 8 decades. Another vehicle had arrived, our bags were being loaded into it. Ellie and Karin had also returned and we had a new driver. 'What d'ya go for a shit?' said Ellie the most mature candidate in our group.
'No, just a whazz!' I replied. 'What happened to you?' I asked.
'Oh I was trying on the policeman’s hat & posing for pictures with his truncheon.' As you do when you waltz into a police station.
Well any who, it turns out that our driver wouldn't be returning to us anytime soon and our tour company had sent us out another vehicle so that we could get back to the capital.
And that pretty much wraps up my tale from the Gobi. I tried to venture north to Khovsgul but with winter approaching tours were reluctant to go and many camps were now closing down for the season. So I was forced to push on towards a geographic location somewhere within the boundaries of Earth where the constituents would be to a very different creed to one’s self, for good or for bad that is not for one to say....not for me anyway....apparently.
END.
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