Cycling into the Wilderness - The Gobi Crossing

Day 142, 20th October

Ulaan Baatar - Khooltyn Davaa

Nothing more has put fear into our hearts more so than crossing the Gobi Desert on our bikes. We’ve heard stories that the road is non-existent, there is very little water, and we could get frozen to death. Still, four crazy guys on bicycles keeping the tran-Mongolian railway in view shouldn’t have much of a problem - we could still flag-down a train if we ran into serious trouble…. Couldn’t we?

After the usual amount of arsing about and last minute things to do that should have been done in the previous days, we set off just before midday. The day was bright, warm, and sunny. The road out of the city was choked with traffic as usual. Just on the outskirts of UB, away from the burning pyres of leaves that seemed to be everywhere, Tobes and Rory wanted to stop at a café. I felt that it was another hour wasted when we should be heading south in the good weather, but, on the other hand maybe they were right to relax in a café - besides, when would we see another café?

We carried on past the checkpoint on the edge of the city, this is where the countryside began, in all its empty glory. We crossed a big river, the railway was off to the right and disappeared into the mountains. The road was good, and amazingly empty. The though occurred to me that the maximum distance for commuters to travel in UB was around 10 miles, because that’s how far we were from the centre. So, why all the needless traffic in the centre of the city?

The road suddenly deteriorated from tarmac to big concrete slabs which led through the town with no name. After the town, the road became a surface of uneven square blocks which tested our bikes somewhat. Then suddenly, the road ended at an old coal mine!

What now? To our right we saw railtrack that led to the mine, crossed them into a field of grassland dotted with families eeking out an existence with shovels, looking for bits of coal - the scene was from the middle-ages. We began to ask a few of these people who were strip-mining the hillside where to go… there were many answers, no-one seemed to know despite us holding up a good topographic map. We ended up cycling across the barren grasslands for miles until we hit the road south.

Road! That’s if you can call it a road - we were on the main Ulaan Baatar to Beijing highway, it was a dirt-track and very rough. There was no traffic, and we had to get up the mountains to the south before we were on the Mongolian plateau. It was slow going and there was no way we would do it today. After 30 miles we camped in a valley next to the ‘road’ and when the sun went down the temperature plummeted… Rory was the one with the thermometer and began calling out the temperatures every few minutes. “It’s zero, minus 1, minus 4, minus 8, minus 12, minus 15 centigrade…. Sorry guys, my thermometer stops at minus 15”! All within an hour!!! The night was bitter

Total Miles: 7327.11 Todays Miles: 31.06 Average speed: 7.4 Time on bike: 4:10


Day 143, 21st October

Khooltyn Davaa - Maanlit (just south of)

As I write this my hands are freezing and it is difficult to find a pen that works. Rory’s thermometer went off the scale last night, we reckoned it was between minus 15-20 Celsius. I got colder and colder in my sleeping bag and had to wear most of my clothes. Another thing we didn’t really count on was the water. All our individual water was stored in several 2 litre fizzy-drink bottles attached to the back of our bikes - this morning every bottle was frozen solid and useless!!!

After packing up we continued up the valley to the top of the mountain range where we expected to see a corresponding valley on the other side, but were greeted by the flat expanse of the high Mongolian plateau. The dirt road disappeared endlessly into the distance and became more packed and flatter. We soon came across the railway and were directed under it by a lone nomad standing at the bridge. The railway was a good point of reference and now we were sure we were on the right road.

This packed road had an extra surprise for cyclists - thorny seeds that had evolved over time to be carried by animals hooves to more fertile locations. They also wreaked havoc with our tyres, Toby had two punctures before noon. We saw camels, a golden eagle, and loads of comical marmots scurrying into holes in front of us. The complete animal carcasses with bleached bones reminded us that this part of the trip was to be taken seriously. With the wind howling behind us we managed to make 50 miles today, then found a spot to camp on the barren plain.

Total Miles: 7378.74 Todays Miles: 51.62 Average speed: 9.8 Time on bike: 5:13


Day 144, 22nd October

Maanlit (just south of) - 20 miles north of Choyr

Had a great sleep last night and awoke to a 180 degree change in wind direction, it was right in our faces as we pedaled off south. The roads became grittier and flatter, the landscape unforgiving. More and more bleached carcasses - a warning to carry more water with us? By the way, we solved the water problem by taking some water from each bottle and putting it into our cooking pots. This morning we could heat that water up and add it back to the bottles which melted the frozen water. For the record, Toby’s lost a bottle from his bike, it’s easy not to notice one has gone, and another split as he threw it from his bike next to his tent. Still…

We were cold despite cycling hard, and after 20 miles we pulled up by a collection of buildings beside the railway line. One guy invited us in for tea and some doughy things, anything warm was welcome. When we came out our bikes were being fiddled with by the locals. On leaving I found my StChristopher missing! Nothing I could do now… One of my first girlfriends, Joy, had bought me that all those years ago, to be lost in the Mongolian wilderness, I would never have guessed it at the time. How life changes!

Today, we were passed by 3 vans and one motorcycle. The wind was relentless, so we camped after 40 miles. This is some of the most desolate landscape I have ever seen. In a place that is so flat like this, the highest object on the horizon is the trans-Mongolian train. At 6.30 it went dark, suddenly. I still had half a gallon of pure spirit from the vodka distillery in Irkutsk. Purely for use with my Trangia spirit burning stove. However, when I made a cuppa I put in a measure which had the desired effect. The others partook too.

We watched the satellites zoom across the heavens shortly after dark, then the stars, the clearest heavens one can imagine. No moon - the darkness nearly absolute. We were bathed in the glow of starlight, for the first time in my life, I was dancing in starlight, which cast no shadow beneath you, giving the impression that you are in some kind of fantasy world. Then, in the absolute silence, a distant rumbling across the plain. It took half an hour to see the cause of this rumbling, the trans-Mongolian night-train. It lit up the whole desert as it passed 300 metres from us. A surreal image of people sitting at tables, drinking champagne and chatting. They would never believe that four cyclists in tents were in that cold, unforgiving place beyond their windows, watching them.

As the train rumbled across the desert towards China, the silence fell again. We all retired to our sleeping bags. The temperature plummeted. And as I lay there, on my little piece of earth that maybe no human has ever slept on before, I became aware of my frailty - I heard my blood pumping around my brain and my heart beating - I am just a speck of dust on this great ball of mud!

Total Miles: 7418.46 Todays Miles: 39.71 Average speed: 7.8 Time on bike: 5:02

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