September 20, 2014
Trying to get help from Mongolians: Moron! Moron!
It was much colder the next morning and there were lots of dark clouds about the place that made the snowy mountains ahead of me look somewhat intimidating. Before too long I found myself in a hailstorm. The weather could change so fast out here, the day before I had been cycling in the warm sunshine in shorts and t-shirt. Anyway, I wish I could say that the hailstones were the size of golfballs, but they weren't.
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The bad weather didn't last very long at all and it was already brightening up by the time I rolled into the village of Darvi. I found a street with lots of shops on it and restocked with food, water, and a pair of fluorescent yellow gloves that rather took my fancy. It was a relatively big village so I thought I'd chance trying to see if there was Internet anywhere. A man who spoke English had stopped to speak with me so I asked him. He was a driver passing through but he asked a local and it was relayed to me that there was a free wifi connection available and an Internet cafe down the road. Great stuff!
I opened up the laptop and found the unsecured connection, but it wouldn't connect. I tried a few different places around the village but it was no use, it wouldn't work. So I started looking for the Internet cafe, but in this regard the people of Darvi were of no use whatsoever. Everyone was unfriendly and nobody could be bothered to help me. A typical example was a woman of whom I asked the simple request "Internet?" She pointed up the street, which was in the direction she was walking. As she was walking up the street I went along with her, thinking she would point me more accurately in the right direction when she could. But no, she ignored me, and went in a shop. And when she came out she looked at me with an 'are you still here?' look, and then got in a car. Yeah, thanks for your help lady. So I never found the Internet, and left Darvi with a worse opinion of Mongolians than when I arrived.
Beyond Darvi I had to leave the main road and head for the mountains, and never before has the term 'main road' been less accurate. Now I was off to try and find a road that Cedric, the Frenchman who walked from France to China, had told me about. It wasn't on his map, nor on mine, but I'd decided to trust him because if it did exist it was a much shorter route that wouldn't go as high as the road that was on the map. And he said it was paved and had no traffic on it. A short, flat, paved road through the mountains sounded too good to be true, but one man I didn't really know had told me about it, so to hell with the maps.
Cedric told me to turn left at the salt lake and go up the mountainside. I followed this clever clue, and there was one main track going up so it was easy to follow. Of course I couldn't be sure I was going the right way so when two motorcyclists came along I asked them if it was the way to Moron, the village that should be on the other side of this first climb. "Moron? Moron?" I asked. They looked at me stupidly. "Moron! Moron!" This was fun, but it wasn't getting me anywhere. "Tsetseg?" I asked, citing the next village on the road. They looked at me stupidly. I got out my map and pointed at the word 'Tsetseg.' Now they nodded and pointed ahead and said "Yes, Tsetseg, Tsetseg."
I hadn't really been scared of the wolves when I was riding through the valleys because I thought they'd all be up in the mountains. Now I was in the mountains I was looking around nervously at every nook and cranny, and was relieved when I reached a summit and descended down into another valley. I could also see that the valley that I was now in was connected to the valley I'd just climbed out of, and if I'd turned left a little bit later I never would have had to climb at all. Oh Cedric, that's not a very good start, but I've come this far, no reason to doubt you yet. I was also now at the place where Moron was marked on my map.
Lucky I hadn't planned on resupplying in Moron. Now I had a choice of whether to camp a little early or head once again into wolf infested mountains. It was one of my easier decisions.
Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 28,780 km (17,872 miles)
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