Episode 16

We are now at Uureg Nuur sitting in the car while some cows graze around us. Now I will try and bring you up to date on what we have been doing to reach this point in time and place.

The new gearbox arrived and more than two days was spent fitting it in the garage next to the Oasis. It was a very big job. A box was made for the old gear box and we shall be carrying that in the car back to the UK.

D took the car for a test run, and as he feared the original problem of not changing gears when it should was still there. Heather had posted some small sensors from the UK that we hoped would arrive before we left but they didn't so we had to leave without them.

To give the car a good test run and to get away from the city for a few days we went out to the National Park about 70k’s from the city, at Terelj. Along the way we saw a herd of Yaks, the first I’ve even seen, L had seen them in Tibet many years ago. The area has some interesting bare granite rock formations. The most unique one is called 'Turtle rock’ and according to L it really does bare some resemblance to the loggerheads that nest on our beach at home in Burnett Heads. Apart from this we spent a quiet couple of days parked next to an Ovoo. This is some sort of shrine, not sure if it’s Buddhist of shamanistic but lots of prayer flags are always attached to them and that is generally a Buddhist thing. August is the mushroom and berry season and there were plenty of mushrooms and other fungi about in the forest.

When we got back to the Oasis we were told that there was a package for us at the post office. My humans then spent a couple of hours locating this post office that was very near to the hostel, and after finally doing so discovered that the package wasn’t for us at all but for someone who had given up weeks ago and left.

We finally left UB one Wednesday afternoon. The weather had fined up that day so the car could be repacked without everything getting drenched in the act, me included. It was well into the afternoon when we finally took our leave of the Oasis, we had been there so long it was just like leaving home.

Of course we didn’t get all that far before things started to unravel as it were. It was the following day when we were crossing some very wet lowlands where a big trailer had got bogged that D suddenly found he had no gears at all after stopping to change out of low ratio. Whoops! What’s up now?

A quick peer underneath located the problem, a leaking gearbox pipe of some sort. D said some unprintable words about how stupid it was to have a small piece of rubber hose, 10cm long linking two metal pipes, it was this rubber one that had burst. D found that he could do away with it altogether, there was enough spare length to join the two metal pipes.

Of course we didn’t have a hacksaw so with the aim of borrowing a hacksaw my humans stopped several vehicles before finding one that had such a tool. Hours later after D had done whatever it was he was doing with the hacksaw he then discovered that he didn’t have a hose clamp that would fit, so then we had to again stop many vehicles before some truck driver came up with some wire and even got under and fixed it on having gathered several other truck drivers and passengers as onlooker. That done, we now had to pour in the auto trans fluid that we had, only 3lt, so D hoped that it would be enough to give us gears and get us to the next town some 80k’s or more away. We didn’t know how much auto trans fluid we had lost nor how much more of this mud we had to transverse.

So, to pour in the fluid we needed a pipe, and well, you guessed it, we didn’t have one of those either. The first truck we stopped , I keep saying we but it was mostly L who did the stopping, had a nice long bit of pipe, he also thought we wanted petrol and was about to leap up and get us some before D (it was him this time) stopped him explaining as best he could that it wasn’t fuel we needed. Pouring in the fluid took a good while too, and it worked, otherwise we could well still be stuck back there.

That bit of drama behind us we continued on our way and when we got to the small town of Arvayheer D bought all the auto trans fluid that was available in the town, 7lt, and we pulled up not far out of town to camp the night and spent a good while filling the gear box with fluid. It took another 3lt so it wasn’t as empty as D had feared. He also secured that connection with a couple of nylon electrical ties as well as the bit of wire because it had still been leaking very slowly. Those electrical ties can be put to all sorts of uses.

There is a great deal of road construction underway in this country but they don’t seem to want traffic to use it. Often when it is sealed there will be big heaps of dirt to prevent traffic from going onto the new tarmac. We have driven alongside such new roads for 20 to 30k’s often and up to 50k stretches. It’s quite upsetting to be bumping along over a rough potholed and corrugated track with clouds of dust billowing about and a perfectly pristine new road alongside. Of course there is the fact that if they don’t let traffic use it then it won’t be needing repair for that much longer. We have noticed that new section we have been allowed to drive on very quickly become potholed and break –up. Even brand new roads that we have driven along unofficially can have big sections under repair. The road making skills of Mongolian are not as good as they could be. Of course, once winter comes and there are even small cracks once the ice gets into them it will soon worsen them.

Between Bayankhongor and Altai we had a rash of river crossings. Most were fine and the car managed them easily. However we came to one where there were some tractors working towing vehicles across so we pulled up and watched to see what the crossing was like. The river was flowing extremely swifty through this very arid desert region. D though the car would get through OK, however as we already had enough problems he opted for the safest method and we had one of the tractors tow us through. I thought it was quite exciting. L will try and load the video of our crossing for you to watch and see what you think. Once through we sat and watched some others being towed and some trucks making their own way. One car made exciting viewing, L will try and load that video for you too.

We aren’t the only ones to have problems on these roads. We came across several cars that were in various stages of disassembly with a multitude of problems. Gearbox and clutch seemed the most common. We had more too, first the RH rear disc brake shield broke and this took a great deal of effort to remove. This happened very near someone with clutch problems and while D was working on ours the other fellow kept borrowing tools to work on his. We were both ready to move on about the same time. A few hours later the LH front disc brake shield broke and had to be removed.

Loaded on a truck that was pulled up was one of the rally cars. The two French men who had been driving it had decided that in order to get it to Ulan Baatar in a usable state then they would have to truck it there. But even on the truck it was having problems as on the bumpy roads it had moved position and was rubbing against the sides of the truck. It had only come 100k’s of the nearly 1000k’s to UB.

In the city of Altai there is a garage that is popular with the Mongolian rally cars and here D managed to get some hose clamps and other bits he wanted and he repaired the gearbox pipe more to his satisfaction. Still that bit of wire and electrical ties had got us around 700k’s across several river fordings too.

Also, while we were in Altai my humans found the bathhouse and had some lovely hot showers, but I’m even more grubby than ever. It was all a bit wasted though I fear as the trip from Altai to Khovd was the dustiest ever with thick bull dust and horrible corrugations and lots of road construction. The scenery makes up for it to a degree. The vast arid desert and those rugged barren mountains with a couple of snow-capped peaks visible for quite some way: Even out here there was the occasional Ger and flocks of goats and sheep. You would think, according to L, that is, that the air would be dusty but fresh, but everywhere the smell of sheep and goats permeates the air. There seems to be no getting away from it. Perhaps it’s because those animals have grazed across this landscape for many thousands of years.

Khovd is quite a spectacular site when first scene: We came over a hill, on a tarmac road too, and there, still 15k’s away and below us was the city, huddled in the bottom of a wide, arid valley with high, barren mountains on the far side. The photo L took does not do the scene justice:

It’s quite a pleasant city as Mongol cities go with many streets having curb and gutters, parks with trees, the first trees we’d seen since leaving UB. Plenty of blocks of soviet style housing units too. Although there is a little industry here one does wonder just what all these people do for a living.

There is a huge lake and wetlands near the city but with all the recent storms access was even more boggy so we gave that a miss and headed up to Ulaangom. Not that Ulaangom proved to have a great deal to offer either, it was similar but smaller. There was water everywhere, huge puddles bigger than Olympic swimming pools. Apparently they had got the storm that we had seen the evening before, it had missed us completely. It did mean however, that we wouldn’t get out to the wetlands by this big lake either. Far too boggy: The lake itself is 5 times saltier than the sea, but the wetlands are full of migrating birds.

So we took an interesting route to Olgii: Over a couple of passes, one at 2000m and another at 2600m and camped beside some lovely lakes on different nights. Uureg Nuur (Uureg lake) is the prettiest bright blue colour from some minerals that are in the water. There were several Gers along the shore and flocks of sheep and goats and herds of cattle that all like to wade in the water so it was quite muddy on the edge. Supposedly the water is good for drinking and you can swim in the lake too, though it’s somewhat chilly. It was very rough too from the strong wind that was blowing.

In this valley and others we passed through we saw many ancient burial mounds topped with piles of rocks and one Turkic balbal. This is another burial mound but has a circle of outer stones too. This one had a diameter of 70m, and a standing stone on one side. There was supposedly an even better one to see but despite having the GPS co-ordinates we didn’t find it.

As we climbed up towards one of the passes we saw a small area of forest on the north facing slopes, this is the first forest we had seen in western Mongolia. The trees were small and thin. More snow capped mountains around:

After passing through the small coal mining town of Khotgor the road was littered with large and small lumps of coal all the way to Olgii. The coal is trucked out to Olgii with a truck leaving every 20 to 30 minutes. So long as we followed the coal lumps we knew we were on the right track. The other lake we camped beside was Achit Nuur. The water here wasn’t so blue but it was extremely soft. Apparently I very nearly got washed in it:

© Lynette Regan 16th August 2013