September 15, 2014
Intelligent conversations and suspicious locals: What are you doing with that cowpat?
I'd camped within sight of a lake and in the morning I tried desperately to reach it. I was in real need of a good wash as everywhere had been dry all along the route. Apart from the big river, which I'd crossed on a really cold day when I didn't feel like swimming, all of the rivers had been dry. That had been good because of course there were no bridges, but also bad, because now I was filthy.
I couldn't get to the lake. One kilometre from it the sand got too soft for the bike and I didn't want to leave it, especially as I could see two suspicious characters acting suspiciously next to a suspicious motorcycle nearby. So I gave up on the idea of the lake and headed towards Delger, the third and final village before Altay. On my way I passed the suspicious characters and they waved me over. It was a woman and a boy, and they were loading dried cow pats into sacks to take home with them. "Why are you doing that? That's very suspicious."
Just before Delger I was invited into a yurt for tea and I accepted. These people seemed poorer and the yurt was dark and not so nicely decorated. A stray goat had come in for a look and had to be shooed outside when I entered. There were a couple of older guys, a younger one and a couple of women and the usual attempts at conversation were made. I got out my map and my camera to keep people entertained as the milkiest tea ever was made on the big stove in the middle of the yurt. I saw the woman stoking the fire and throwing more suspicious-looking dried cow pats onto it. 'Ah, that solves that one!'
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Delger was just a small place with dusty streets and stray dogs and nothing interesting happened. By the time I got back to the paved road I had a huge tailwind for once. It was brilliant! I was racing tumbleweed, flying along like a kite. Speaking of which I saw a couple of kites ahead of me, flying over the desert to my left. I knew who this was, a couple of the Mongol Rally teams had told me about these guys who were crossing Mongolia on kite buggies. I hadn't expected to see them today because the wind was going the wrong way, but here they were, doing their best to zig-zag upwind.
I went off-road and over to the first of them who had stopped as the other was quite a long way behind. I introduced myself and he did the same, revealing his name to be Craig, a middle-aged man who now lived in New Zealand but was born in Rhodesia. His southern African accent remained and was almost overwhelming and he ended a lot of sentences with 'bro.' "The wind's going the wrong way bro'" and "Gav's not that slow, we've only got one upwind kite bro" and so on and so forth, bro. He was an incredibly friendly man and it was a pleasure to stop and speak with him. It seemed he'd been planning this trip for years and now they'd been frustrated by lots of unexpected winds which meant they probably weren't going to make it all the way across the country in the 30 days they had.
Having spent quite a long time talking to these great guys I was keen to press on and make the most of the wind, but soon a car overtook me and stopped. This had been happening quite a lot, Mongolians had a habit of stopping when they saw me just to ask me where I was going and offer me a lift. I found them quite difficult to talk with most of the time and I didn't particularly enjoy most of these encounters, but this time I was surprised to pull up and see two white faces. It was a European couple, the German girl was working in Mongolia for a year and her Dutch boyfriend was with her. They were also very nice and we talked for quite a while too. It was really good to have these conversations, little did I know that they would be the last intelligent conversations that I would have for some time.
Of course by the time the intelligent conversations were over the massive tailwind was gone.
Today's ride: 89 km (55 miles)
Total: 28,486 km (17,690 miles)
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