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Published: October 5th 2007
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The weather is turning bad when finally found a place to camp for the night on the edge of Khyargas Nuur lake, the wind is picking up and is such a struggle trying to get your tent up. You can feel the threat of rain, a few rain drops here and there so I made sure my fly is up.The ground is quite pebbly I did not bother to sweep them away before setting up tent and later I will regret it, the bumpy floor was not comfortable to say the least. Dinner was quick for me and off to bed, I was tired. All through out the night the wind was howling and gusting, I barely slept at all, it feels like the tent is going to collapse on me, the winds are just too strong, blowing away everything, the only good thing is there will be no mosquitoes! I will always remember this as the night of the howling winds, well after all we are in the Mongolian steppes, mostly grassy flat terrain, nothing to stop the winds. I woke up feeling crap, and had the chills, this is when I had my remaining Homi noodles, my comfort food.
We drove along the shores of the lake and stopped briefly to take some photos, the lake is beautiful, I believe it is saltwater judging from the white salt deposits along it's banks and lots of wildlife(birds). We stopped at a town called Naranbulag for provisions. We are now in the Bayan Olgiy Aimag we had another bush camp here. I lost count already on how many days I have not showered so when we set up camp the next day near a lake called Achit Nuur it was a welcome relief. No sooner than we pitched our tents in the gravelly ground the kids started coming and ever so curious about us, they checked everything, our gadgets, utensils, food that we are eating, even sat down on the chairs maybe to have a feel on what it's like to be an overlander. Tony, Andy and Peter played soccer with them while a lot of us took the opportunity to wash ourselves and do laundry. Claire filled up the water jugs and the kids followed her, even helped her carry things for her. I decided to try and finish the book I am reading at the moment, it is called
In Search of Kazakhstan by Christopher Robbins, but I fell asleep and woke up with the intense heat searing my tent so got out and sat at the camp and got drunk with Cass the Korean beer that has been getting us through Mongolia, tomorrow we will cross the border to Siberia, yay! We had an early start it was still dark when we broke camp, we'll try to get to the border before the border guards go for their 2 hour lunch. The scenery is again stunning, wide open spaces, vast valleys, colorful green/red/brown/yellow hills, flat steppes, Mongolia's landscapes is a mix of everything and I will certainly miss it as hard it is to explore the country due to poor roads, it is visually stunning, reminds me of Kyrgyzstan, the mountains and rolling hills only to a larger scale, vast open spaces, unlike Kyrg where you are mostly enclosed by the mountain ranges. The people are very friendly, and down to earth, hospitable and ever so curious of us. Anyhoo, as we are driving we came accross a couple of cars participating in the Mongol Rally, we stopped and had a chat with them, they started in London
I believe and one car has a problem so they stopped at the side of the road,
took some photos of their cars and after Claire, Tony and Tamir gave them some tips about the roads we are off, we briefly stopped at a gushing mountain stream for water. We got to the border town and of course the border is closed for lunch. So we set up our kitchen right there and started having lunch, the kids came like a magnet even their mom and dads, they quite enjoyed having their photos taken, Andy had a field day. When it opened we quickly queued, Mongol side is slow, we saw some more rally participants going through customs on the other side, did not realized how many they are. We said our sad goodbyes to Tamir our ever so cheerful guide through Mongolia, we gave him as a parting gift one of the red foam hand, and he waved it as we drove towards the Russian frontier which is about 5kms. there we waited again, we were boarded by an officer, handed entry cards but he wanted us to fill it in in Russian and was quite surprised we can't
COMFORT FOOD
HOMI NOODLES write in Cyrillic, after checking with his boss he gave us a go signal to fill it in English. Once we past this stage it is another 15 kms of no man's land to drive , and for the first time I saw marmots, not just one but heaps of them, boy are they big and fat, they thrive here probably because they don't get hunted and eaten by the Russians. The Russian side was quite strick. Took us awhile to get through, you get stamped then have to go to another office where they interview you again and then through a customs guy. We were ordered to take out all our belongings out of the backlocker, but did not really do a thorough search, just want to annoy us by showing who's the authority. One guy was quite friendly trying to engage us in conversations practicing his English. On the other side we met our Russian guide Sasha.
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