Having left Moron we decided to spend a few days driving along the line, slowly making our way towards UlaanBaatar. Northern Mongolia is stunningly beautiful, but not what we had expected at all. It is like driving through Switzerland, with the addition of an unbelievable number of flies. Whilst driving through this sort of scenary is nice, the flies made stopping pretty unpleasant and the forest made the driving pretty much impossible. So at the end of the first day we decided that we would make our way back to the road and drive straight to the capital for the Nadaam festival. We could have continued along the line, but all the sawing and moving of logs sounded like to much hard work and would have taken too long. We did give three random kids a lift from their ger down to the river, after finding a good fording point we drove across the river and left the kids there. We were slightly worried how they were going to make it back home 10km away, but they seemed fairly unfussed about the whole thing.

That night we stopped at the top of one of the hills to camp and had the most amazing view over the valley below.

As night came the flies went to bed and suddenly the magic of Mongolia was back, we enjoyed a curry and chapatis over an open fire with the mist filled valleys glowing silver in the moon light. This nearly made us change our minds about going straight to UB but in the morning the flies where back and we jumped in the car to start the two day drive to civilization.

The driving that day was pretty easy and uneventful and we got back to the road and made some good miles. A quick lunch stop at a cafe involved 12 deep fried pasty things, it would have been nice to have something else but that was all the cafe served. After the danger (unidentified meat) pastys we appreciated Dave’s cooking even more and had a nice dinner with a view of more stunning valleys.

The next day things got a bit more interesting. We were back in the barren empty Mongolia everyone imagines and enjoyed some more breathtaking scenery.

Driving along quite happily we suddenly came across a police check point, very unusual in Mongolia and we then picked up two more police stops. We later found out we had driven through a gold mine and a highly restricted area, but fortunately the police just found us funny and pointed the way to UB. It started to rain in the afternoon and it would appear dirt tracks turn in to ice rinks when it rains and i had a 4 hour driving stint doing some of the most difficult but fun driving so far. There was a lot of sideways action and every few seconds a water splash would completely blind me for a while.

These where interesting and it was always a bit of a gamble to see if you emerged still facing the way you where moving. That night somehow we found a gap in the clouds and managed to set up camp in the dry and got a good nights sleep, just around the corner from an eagle’s nest (of the non-Nazi type), complete with a very ugly eagle chick.

The last 100km to UB should have been easy as the track took on some semblance of a road, but as with most of the roads we have found it was better to drive on the track off to the side, so Dave had a whole morning of controlled sliding. At one point we where fully sideways and all producing brown adrenalin, but the rest of the time it was actually general pretty controlled. Then something happened to make us all very happy. We came across a Land Cruiser stuck in the mud. People have always asked us if we would prefer a Land Cruise as they are more comfortable etc, but they are rubbish off road and it was a lot of fun towing this one out. It was made even better when we snapped the Toyota issue tow cable and had to use our own.

We spent the morning stopping to help people out of the mud and even tried to help a ten tonne truck that drove into exactly the same pot hole we had just pulled the Land Cruiser out of. I have to say i would never drive through this country in anything but a Land Rover everything else seemed to get stuck and we (except for the sideways incident) had no problems at all.

So we arrived in UB at about lunchtime and then drove round the city for 3 hours trying to blag our way in to all the nice hotels. This did not go so well and we ended up in a really cool guest house to chill out and take in the sights of Mongolia’s only city.

- Pete

Playing on the iPod: Anything by Wet Wet Wet

Police Stop Count: 22

We wrote this blog in Eastern Kazakhstan (surprising, huh?) and for one reason and another it never made got uploaded.  Here it is:

Having been entertained by the embassy staff in Astana (Rhys and Bernie, you are legends thanks for a great night), we headed off towards Karaganda and our next case study. Through some friends from Astana we found two lovely young Kazak ladies (thanks Nastya and Ira we had a great day) to help us with our interviews and had a lot of fun with another crazy farmer.

After this the next stop in Barnaul in Russia via the ex-nuclear testing site at Semey, that should all be easy, we are only entering the most lawless part of Russia. After camping outside Karaganda we set off and had a fairly easy day, the only event was a little bit of black market diesel buying.

So, as we will be leaving Kaz in a couple of days what did we think of it? None of us have ever been anywhere where there is more space, it is truly indescribable, and certainly 1500 miles of western Kazakhstan is totally featureless. They are also not about to run out of wind, people used to get exiled to the Kazakh steppe and apparently the wind drove them crazy. Fortunately we were already pretty crazy, so there has been no perceivable affects. Having said all of that, we have seen some truly stunning countryside and have loved driving through the empty plains.

The food is very different, with some things being very interesting (fizzy alcoholic milk), but most things being fairly plain. We tend to eat a lot of cheese, but that is all there is to say about it, it is just generic cheese.

But the best thing about this country is the people. We were told lots of horror stories and every one we spoke to said “take a gun”. They could not have been more wrong. Everyone we have met has been amazingly friendly (except the cheeky little …. who stole my phone). We have very little Russian, and never know where we are going or exactly what we are looking for, but people will always help us, even as far as driving 200 miles with us so we did not get lost. It has been an amazing experience and we want to thank everyone we met. It would be great to come back in 5 years time to see how things have changed, there is a lot of money here and it will be interesting to see what they do with it.

We will probably talk to you next from Russia, if we get in!

- Pete

There’s nothing apocalyptic about this entry, or even any ponies, but the name tickled me.  We’ve spent the last couple of days by Lake Hovsgul in northern Mongolia, the second deepest lake in Asia apparently (behind Baikal, which we visit shortly).  After our previous exploits in Mongolia the lake came as a shock to us: there were signs in English, souvenir shops, tourist camps, our first impressions were that it was a bit like a Mongolia theme park.  I think we’ve become travel snobs because we all got righteously indignant about the prospect of camping in designated zones and having other westerners around.

This faded soon enough though as in true expedition fashion we got Roxanne stuck in some mud.  It was highly embarrassing given that we were only 50m from the road, but we attracted the assistance of a group of locals and learnt some interesting Mongolian methods for vehicle extraction!  These guys were very friendly, and after we gave them some whisky and photos in thanks they insisted we should camp by their house and even gave us a bag of freshly caught fish in the morning.

We indulged in a little tourism by taking a horse ride beside the lake and into surrounding mountains, hence the title of the blog.  The horses were definitely horses, not ponies, but were pretty small, and since we were all a bit rubbish we thought that pony was appropriate.  Our young guide was definitely not rubbish though – he was an excellent horseman, and infinitely cooler than us, he then was ‘Death’.  Pete on his trusty steed Timmy took the mantle of ‘Famine’ (anyone aware of Pete’s appetite will see the irony), whilst I snapped up ‘Pestilence’ for myself and my white wonder Honky, and Spike seemed quite pleased to take ‘War’ for himself and Hotter (a name actually based on the horse’s real name ridiculously).  It was a fun few hours anyway, culminating in a beautiful commando roll descent from Pete as Timmy tripped on a particularly tricky bit of flat ground.

The lake itself is beautiful with stunningly clear water, and we spent many hours happily skimming stones and taking freezing cold dips on a deserted pebble beach (with the most amazing selection of skimming stones!).  We were also quite keen to leave though, since we are rather fond of the road less travelled and there is just so much beautiful scenery to see in this country.

We paused on our way from the lake to watch some traditional wrestling, which was great fun and I think we all fancy giving it a crack!

Who needs a GPS?

We stopped in the town of Moron (sic) for a restock, after giving a tow to a van on the road into town (Land Rover to the rescue!). In town we noticed a hotel called 50 degrees 100 degrees reminding us where we are, and just how far we have to go.  What a wonderful journey it is.

- David

Playing on the iPod:  ‘The Gambler’ by Kenny Rogers

Roxy making good progress on gravel tracks.

We’ve spent the last few days driving up from Altai mountains to the north of Mongolia.  The scenery has been fantastic throughout.  We all agree we like Mongolia the most out of all the countries we’ve visited so far.

The landscape is out of this world, there’s hardly any towns and the people are so friendly and curious.

Man without petrol

Most of the people live in Gers (or Yurts in Russian), a large tent and they are predominantly herdsmen with sheep, goats or cows.

There’s not really any roads in this country. “Main” roads are nothing more than a collection of tracks between a couple of towns a few hundred kilometres apart.  The driving has definitely got a lot more interesting since we entered Mongolia.

Today has been our first day of bad weather since leaving England.  Numerous times I looked out of the window and it could’ve been mistaken for Dartmoor.
We headed from our last night’s camp toward Hatgal, a journey of about 150km as the crow flies.

Roxy looking a little dirty after a mudbath – Dave wasn’t much cleaner!

We took several wrong turns – very easy when there’s no road signs, road surface or even accurate mapping – and ended up in some impressive gorges, with no way out.  In the end we only covered about 80km.

Our neighbours who came and visited us one morning. I talked to them a bit with hand signals and our Mongolian phrasebook. A traditional greeting is to ask them if their animals are fattening up nicely, which I did.

We’ve just eaten a delicious plate of fish and potato curries that Dave cooked up – one of his best meals to date, possibly surpassed by his tapas selection.  It’s started to rain again so we’ve abandoned the fire to play cards and savour a couple of squares of Dairy Milk which has come all the way from England.

We’ve heard through the Sat Phone that some of the Mongolians in Ulaanbaatar are a bit less chilled out than the ones we’ve met so far.  Any further information and updates on the riots would be much appreciated (just click on ‘contact’).  We’ll be down there in just over a week.

- Spike

Playing on the iPod: “Another day in Paradise” by Phil Collins

Police stop count: 20 (our latest happened whilst we were parked up.  It seems the Mongolians don’t actually bother stopping you, they just bide their time until you stop)

Waking up to an amazing view we packed up and headed south east towards the city of Alti. This is a small detour, but the scenery is supposed to be amazing and we have not been disappointed. We all agree that none of us have been to any other countries that continually make you say ‘woow‘. The colours of the mountains, the shapes, everything is so alien and different to anything else we have ever seen, it is hard to describe.

We arrived in our first Mongolian city at about lunchtime and managed to get some supplies and a very nice lunch, having enlisted the help of a friendly local. The ‘city’ was not very big and a bit dirty so we headed off again to make some miles south. After a few hours we saw a snow-capped mountain poking out of the desert and decided it would be fun to climb.

Using our favoured climbing method we drove up as far as we could. Roxy is amazing and we took her up some of the steepest stuff yet, and through some serious bolder fields, but even she could only make it up to about 2,700 meters. We decided to camp in a small river valley at this height and climb the rest in the morning.

Morning came and being us we managed to head off at about 11.30. It took nearly 4 hours to climb the 4,000m peak – it seems there is less air up there making life a bit harder.

Spike and Pete approaching the summit

Team Latitude at the Top

The climb was fairly technical in places and I think we all managed to scare ourselves sufficiently to make the summit very satisfying. The way down was a little different and involved a scree run descending 300m, which we managed to come down in just four minutes. The whole climb was great fun, and we even managed a couple of hours driving in the evening.

We camped by a nice river, and left this morning after a refreshing wash in the meltwater. Today we managed a good distance on a really good track. It would appear that 60 mph is easy if the track is good enough, so I guess no roads really is better than bad roads. This evening we headed up in to the mountains early to have a good few hours chilling before the sun went down.
There turned out to be a small stream at the base of the mountains and after a couple of minutes driving along it we found a good crossing point. Dave got out and declared that the stream was quite deep, but firm and if we hit it at an angle with only one wheel in at a time we should be fine. Three wheels cleared it with out much problem, the fourth however decided not to play ball and sunk up to the chassis. It turns out we are back in ‘getting stuck’ territory.

Out came Harry (the winch) and what we thought would be a simple pull out.
Unfortunately Roxy decided to do some bank surfing and we decided to stop when the angle was bad enough for Dave to wash his face in the stream from the driver’s seat.

From here we had little option but to carry on winching as if we had taken the tension off the winch she would have rolled over. We hammered the highlift jack in to the ground and secured a rope to the roof rack to attempt to hold her if she went.

Dave then continued to rev the engine from the passenger seat (to power the winch) while Spike and I surfed the high side to add a little more weight to stop the roll, and off we went.

This time fortunately she decided that surfing was not fun any more and climbed the bank with minimal fuss. So now we are camped up and looking forward to a couple more days of the most stunning mountains we have ever seen.

Peter