Part III: "The Big Empty"

On Tuesday 7 August we finally put our feet, or better our wheels, on the unpaved roads, or better tracks, of Mongolia, the most sparsely populated country in the world. 2.75mln people living in a country 6 times bigger than the UK. This makes Norway look as crowded as Monaco... 

We were welcomed by a spectacular scenery with several peaks reaching 4,000m, a vast, open and empty grassland and an astonishing lack of roads. Or maybe I should say an astonishing abundance of them. Yes, it's a bit confusing but the thing is that in theory there is a "highway" that goes from the western border to Ulan Bator through Olgii, Khovd, Altai, etc but this highway is far (very, very, very far) from being completed. For the vast majority of its length is closed or simply undrivable and only the last 400Km (out of 1800Km) before Ulan Bator are (badly) paved. To make up for the lack of a highway, a number of unpaved tracks have sprung around it in a disorderly fashion. All these tracks have their own unique characteristics; some are sandy, some muddy, some with huge potholes, some others with a myriad of small ones, some bring you to the next city and some others disappear into the unknown. The only common denominator is that the average speed rarely exceeds 30Kmh... 

Despite the lack of speed we had a good first day in Mongolia. We managed to cross a river without sinking and at sunset we set our camp up in a beautiful valley surrounded by horses (apparently in Mongolia there are 13 horses for every human being) and a couple of yurts in the distance.

Our second day was far from good. We left our campsite at dawn and reached Khovd later in the morning where we stopped at the Mongol Rally drop off point for breakfast. As 90% of people who retire from the rally do so in Mongolia, the organizers have set up 5 drop off points on the way to Ulan Bator so the cars could be fixed (if possible) and collected rather than being ingloriously abandoned on the side of the road.

We said goodbye to the helpful lady in charge of the camp and drove towards the next town, Altai. If possible the road got worse and eventually took its toll on our car. We broke the rear suspension spring in three parts and were faced with the hard decision of whether keep going (other 400Km to Altai) or drive back to Khovd (50Km) to fix it. We decided for the latter and slowly drove back to the Mongol Rally camp where luckily the mechanic (the one in the picture below...) was able to fix it in a couple of hours.

We fixed the car but unfortunately we lost a member of the team. Adrian decided to take the plane to Ulan Bator as the time was running out and given the condition of the roads it wasn't guaranteed that we would make it in time for him to catch his flight back to London.

On Thurday Adam and I set off again towards Altai but we soon had to stop as another suspension spring was about to come off. Luckily it wasn't broken and we managed to put in back in place with the help of two teams that pulled over to check whether everything was ok. These where the same guys who we met in Turkmenistan weeks ago. Great to see them again here.

As we passed Altai, the road brought us close to the Gobi desert where eventually we stopped for the night. What an amazing place where to camp; nothing around us, no trees, no hills, no people.

Problems with the car? Lost in the desert? Flat tire? Engine failure? Stuck in mud? Worry not! Team The Wrong Way Around is here to help! 

This is exactly what happened on our 4th day in Mongolia. We were driving east on some muddy roads (this was the wettest summer in Mongolia as far as people could remember) when we saw a local family asking for help. Their Toyota Crown Royal Saloon was stuck in the mud and we towed them out of it receiving an invitation for food and drinks at their house as a thank you.

Later in the day, just when we started looking for a place where to camp our exhaust came off. The insane amount of vibrations loosened all the belts and screws of the car and the exhaust was the first piece to fall. We removed it from the bottom of the car and strapped it to the roof (no piece stays behind...) and, probably excited by the new sound of our car that now looked and sounded like a tank, decided to keep driving to the next town.

Driving at night was a memorable experience and one of the highlights of the trip. If it's easy to get lost in the maze of off road tracks during the day, you could just imagine the sense of disorientation you get while driving at night. We tried to keep the electricity poles in sight as we thought that they would eventually direct us to the next town but it was impossible to follow them for long as the roads kept taking odd directions away from them.

Only at 1am we finally reached Bayankhongor but the day was not over. Despite being kind of a small shithole, the town seems to be quite popular and all the (3) hotels were full so the only option left was to drive few more Kms and sleep in the car on a hill overlooking the town (too tired to set the tents up).

The 5th day in Mongolia was pretty uneventful. We woke up early and drove to the next and last town before Ulan Bator, Arvaikheer. We found an hotel and had a late lunch at 4pm. We retired to our rooms for a quick nap ready for more drinks and food later in the afternoon but I guess we were both more tired that we thought and we ended up sleeping uninterruptedly from 5pm until the next morning.

Last day on the road was supposed to be a relaxing one. We knew that the last 400Km before Ulan Bator were paved but what we didn't know was how badly they were paved. It was probably worse that driving off road as the tarmac gave us the confidence to drive faster but at 130kmh is not easy to stop and/or avoid big potholes... and in fact we didn't avoid them and finally, after almost 13,000 Km we had to change our first tire! 

At 2:30pm on Sunday the 12th of August, one month and 13,000Km after the start in Goodwood, we brought our car (or maybe it was the car that brought us) to the finish line in Ulan Batar. The Mongol Rally was over. We made it. 39th out of more than 300 teams (many of those are still somewhere between Germany and Mongolia. In 2011 the last team at the finish line arrived at the end of September) we went straight to the bar and the celebrations begun.