October 2, 2016
To Tosontsengel: Racing the storm, deciding what to do next
It rains a couple of times during the night, sometimes quite heavy. The wind picks up too, our tent shakes but with the extra storm lines withstands it with no trouble. We weren’t quite sure when we bought this Hilleberg Staika whether spending twice what you can buy a perfectly good tent for would be worth it. On nights like this it is.
In the morning the sky has cleared and the temperature has dropped below freezing, there is ice on our tent and bikes. The light is beautiful though and there are cloud hanging over the mountains to our north. We boil water for coffee and oatmeal, pack-up and hit the tracks. Just pick one, they start off okay, then go soft, just switch to another one that looks better, get bogged down again, switch.... and so on.
The climb is only supposed to be about 200 meters altitude gain, but we are both struggling to get up it. There are a couple of dips to deep gullies with very steep banks. But eventually we reach the Oovoo at the summit. The light is still beautiful, on the oovoo with blue khota scarfs, a yak skull complete with horns and yellow larch trees on the hills. It is also getting cloudier with rain threatening.
We eat some lunch and head down. Only another 17 kilometer to town. The town is a bit weird though, straddling a wide riverbed with only a few tracks across. There is a main road and a fairly nice hotel we read about on a blog. The Skyline Hotel is near the center, has a hot shower downstairs, basic but clean rooms for 30,000T, about US$14. There is a restaurant downstairs with an English menu, but not all items are available. Nothing uncommon there.
We have been watching the weather forecast for this part of Mongolia and a pretty good storm was forecast to drop the temperatures dramatically and increase the likelihood of precipitation. It was supposed to hit tomorrow, now the forecast changed and delayed it a couple of days. We really want to ride as much of Mongolia as we can, this is an awesome experience with every day bringing something new and unique. But we are not equipped to ride in sub-zero temperatures and our sleeping bag is not heavy enough for really cold nights.
Weather forecasts are often wrong though and we do not want to take a ride now just because of a forecast. So we decide to ride on tomorrow, see what the weather does and take a ride to Tsetsengel if that becomes the sensible thing to do.
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Today's ride: 35 km (22 miles)
Total: 23,254 km (14,441 miles)
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