A scary story: But lovely clouds

September 9, 2014

Naturally the excitement of Mongol Motorcycle Paparazzi Challenge spilled over into a second day. And with the burst function I began to enjoy some success finally:

My first success! Okay, I'll grant you not a big success, but look, a wheel!

Aren't the clouds nice in Mongolia? (this wasn't part of the game)

Okay back to the game WOWZER! I actually did it!!!

Okay, in between these successes there were also a lot of failures that we won't talk about

In non-motorcycle photography news at some point in the day I was on my way up a steep hill when an oil tanker came up behind me to overtake and as it did so let out an extremely loud blast of its horn that scared me something silly. A few minutes later at the top of the climb where the road levelled out I saw the tanker had stopped at the side of the road. This time as I overtook it it let out a loud blast of its horn that didn't quite scare me silly because I was expecting it. I looked around and the driver called me over.

I went back and stood beneath the window of his cab in which he had evidently stopped to have his lunch. Smiling he passed me down a bottle of fizzy pop which I took a drink from before passing it back. He was filling himself up with tinned cow and offered that to me next, although I declined. It was a very strange sort of shared picnic indeed, with him sitting up in his cab and me down in he road. Next he handed me a big bowl of fermented horse milk. Oh, yeah, they got that in Mongolia too, could they be any more like Kyrgyzstan? It seemed to me quite a bad idea to mix fizzy pop and fermented horse milk in my stomach, but I drank it anyway and thanked the man for his kindness before heading onwards for more Mongol Motorcycle Paparazzi Challenge adventures.

I realised I needed a new tactic, and started holding the camera under the handlebars and tilting it forward instead of going sideways. My success ratio increased dramatically

I never quite got that perfect shot though. Although, aren't those clouds lovely?

I thought I saw another motorcycle coming and got quite excited about it but then I realised that it was going too slowly and that it was in fact another touring cyclist. Strange to meet another touring cyclist and be disappointed about it, but there you go. But then, as chance would have it, a motorcycle did appear coming along behind the touring cyclist, and they seemed scheduled to reach me at just the same time, so I got my camera ready to take a picture of the motorcycle anyway, except the batteries in my camera died, and I didn't get the photo. But all of this explains why I wasn't able to take a photo of the touring cyclist.

The touring cyclist was a middle-aged Dutch woman whose name I cannot exactly remember but it was something like Elinzska. What I can tell you is that whatever her name is, she is the only person in the world with that name ("I googled it, you only get me.") Elinzska had cycled to Moscow, from where she took the Trans-Siberian train to Ulan Bator. Now she was doing a short loop in Mongolia before taking the train again on to Beijing. She had been off on some of the bad roads further north and had encountered a nasty situation, which I did my best to listen to sympathetically, although I was bent over double over my handlebars in pain. Something in my stomach wasn't sitting quite right.

"I was cycling along," she said, "and two teenage boys on horseback came for me. They grabbed my handlebars and knocked me off the bike. They were really mean, they weren't playing, they didn't care if I got hurt. They took this bag off the back and made off with it. It's the one with my tent, my raincoat. I waved some money at them, and they came back. I gave them 20,000 tugriks, what is it, eight euros."

It was a sobering story. I'd heard a few too many things like this now and hoped just to keep my head down and get through the rest of Mongolia without any such problems. I was just glad that Elinzska was alright, and that she hadn't been put off continuing her tour. Actually I was really pleased to meet someone that had cycled around on these bad roads in the west of Mongolia without resorting to taking any lifts. "Oh no, I took a jeep for a bit," she added.

Today's ride: 81 km (50 miles)
Total: 28,051 km (17,420 miles)

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