September 4, 2014
I can't think of a title for this page: I'll do it later
The next morning I watched Dea riding off side-by-side next to a tall, handsome Frenchman and, as always when losing a girl that I liked, I turned angrily on my talking bicycle:
Me: "Well there goes another one! Hey bike, why aren't you a motorcycle? We could keep up with her then."
Talking bicycle: "I don't know mate, why aren't you a tall, handsome Frenchman?"
Me: "Ah, touch, talking bicycle, touch."
Talking bicycle: "I think the word you're looking for is touché"
Me: "Oh piss off!"
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Then pretty much nothing happened for a couple of days. The road got less and less busy as I moved further from Ulan Bator and the only inhabitants were those living nomadically in yurts. Consequently I had very little interaction with people, unless you count the cars that slowed down to stare at me, and the occasional man shrieking loudly at me while passing by motorcycle. This loud shrieking wasn't particularly pleasant but I thought it was supposed to be some sort of greeting and took to responding with a wave. Aside from that I had some very nice conversations with cows, sheep, goats, horses and, occasionally, pigs.
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On the evening of the 5th I passed an area where sand dunes had built up. The terrain for a long time had been grassy sand, like the Kazakh steppe but a bit more green. But for a few kilometres here the sand had built up into Sahara-like dunes and the Mongols hadn't missed a trick. Literally hundreds of camels lay around nearby, seemingly with the sole purpose of taking tourists for a trek into the 'desert.' There didn't appear to be any tourists around though, and a couple of the guys with camels made a half-hearted attempt to get me to stay in one of the tourist yurts, saying it was going to rain. It clearly was going to rain, that much was true, but I had a tent, and my tent was waterproof, and free. And whilst I wasn't going to take a camel into the dunes it did briefly cross my mind to go and take a walk in them, but then I decided against it on account of the fact that if I admired the sand too much here I might not fully appreciate the 600 kilometres of it I was going to have to cycle across later.
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The rain came down heavily that night and the next morning too. I got up and cycled in it happily though - rain was always more fun than flies. Again not an awful lot happened throughout the day. Things had got a bit boring and come evening it started to rain again and, even though I had a tremendous tailwind, I still found myself reminiscing about what had happened a few nights ago, meeting those great travelers, visiting the yurt, spending time with the most beautiful girl in the world. Why couldn't that happen every night? I got a bit annoyed with life about it, and I think maybe life took this to heart, because then it did something about it.
I saw a couple of motorbikes outside a yurt just next to the road that had bags on that looked more like traveler bags than Mongolian bags and a little twinge of hope surged inside me. Although Dea and her gang had no fixed plans for their route, they were going to do a loop and then head back to Ulan Bator, and I knew it was possible that they might be coming back my way. Rather than just cycle past and potentially miss seeing them again I pulled off the road and went to check it out. As I did so I saw that as well as the bikes there was another one of those Mongol Rally cars parked up too. Then people started emerging from the yurt, first two male bikers from San Francisco and a third from Serbia. My disappointment that none of the bikes belonged to Dea was short-lived however, as the Mongol Rally team walked out; two guys and two girls and one of the girls, you're not going to believe this, was the most beautiful girl in the world. Nice work life! You've got to hand it to life sometimes. It might be short and a bitch but it does have a funny, funny way of helping you out, of helping you out.
They were all looking for somewhere to stay for the night because of the 'terrible weather' and had been told to go to the yurt across the road, so everyone moved over there. I didn't particularly want to stop because the 'terrible weather' was blowing a gale force wind in exactly the right direction and I had been flying along, but I didn't want to miss out on the chance for some human interaction. So we all piled into a building across the road next to the yurt and a Mongol woman made us some coffee and dumplings whilst stories were exchanged.
To summarise briefly, the Serbian man had ridden from Serbia, the two guys from San Francisco were on a short bike trip around Mongolia before flying on to Korea and then back home, and the Mongol Rally team had driven a Skoda from London. I can't remember the bikers names but the rally team were Ewan, Olly, Haley and Sophie. I won't tell you which one of them I thought was the most beautiful girl in the world because they might read this, and I wouldn't want to upset the other ones, but it wasn't Ewan or Olly. Ewan, in fact, had a tremendous great beard, a real sailor beard it was and he'll be played by a young Captain Birdseye in my movie. It was most appropriate because the four of them had all just finished degrees from the maritime university in Plymouth and were set for careers on the high seas. Interestingly enough they were planning to drive back to the UK by the 24th of September for their graduation. I wouldn't even be out of Mongolia by then.
Feelings about Mongolia from my fellow travelers were mixed. The Serbian man couldn't wait to leave. "As soon as I cross that border I'm going to tell everyone 'I'm out of Mongolia!' I'm going to tweet it!" Which didn't quite seem to be in the spirit of things. But the guys from San Fransico agreed: "It was great for two days! Two days was enough!" As for the young sailors, they'd at least made an effort to immerse themselves in the culture. A little too much perhaps. Staying in a yurt the vodka had soon been cracked open, and then I believe some home brew, and trying to keep up with the locals the poor boys had come off a little the worse for wear. At some point poor Ewan's trousers had got very wet, I won't embarrass him by revealing exactly how, but they did, and had to be removed and hung on a line outside. After a night where the girls stayed up in shifts to make sure neither of the boys stopped breathing, come morning the unfortunate Ewan's trousers had disappeared, along with his wallet. Well, that's what you get for immersing yourself in the culture I suppose.
Meeting with these guys had unexpected benefits too, for they were the first people that I had met who had actually come via the Altay to Bayankhongor road and could fill me in on what to expect. "It's a really bad road" they said. "But is it sand?" I asked. Sand was my biggest fear. Washboard would be a pain, slow and frustrating, but I could do it, 600 kilometres of loose sand would be impossible. "No, it's not sand" they said. I did a little jig inside with joy. If a Skoda could do this road, then I could do it! And the San Francisco bikers cut off the western half of their map for me to take. Nothing could stop me now!
We moved to the yurt where there were several beds for sleeping and a stove for keeping warm and cooking. In exchange for a pasta dinner I gave Ewan a pair of my trousers, that I'd bought second hand in Bishkek and didn't actually fit me. They didn't fit Ewan either, but he didn't seem to mind, wearing them around his thighs as a kind of extension of his shorts. There weren't quite enough beds for everyone but that was okay by me, I was happy enough to go outside and put up my tent. Ewan looked too much like a snorer to me.
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04/09/14 - 81km
05/09/14 - 122km
06/09/14 - 102km
Today's ride: 305 km (189 miles)
Total: 27,816 km (17,274 miles)
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