We have had all dirt the past day and a half of riding. Some of it fun - some if it miserable deep sand. The deep sand is very difficult for me - I haven't figured out how to ride in it. The shallow sand has been ok - the back end just slides around a bit. But the deep sand grabs the front wheel and starts the bike bucking around. I crashed three times within 30 minutes through the deep sand sections we hit this afternoon. The going is tough as we only covered about 100 miles riding for 8 hours. My 49 year old body is pretty beat up this evening. Luckily I have vodka to mask the soreness. Tonight we are in a guest house in Tosonchengel after camping in a beautiful valley in the Steppe last night. It got pretty cold overnight - camping in Mongolia is just an awesome experience. We would probably have camped tonight if we weren't so beat by the time we reached the town - and $12 for a bed and $2.50 for dinner is pretty hard to pass up. We were hoping for showers and a bathroom, but this place has neither. A bucket of water for a face wash and a hole in the ground outhouse is all we get.
We stopped for lunch at a beautiful shaded area with a creek running through it. We also scored a free lunch - or a Yogi as Ken called it. There was a German group on a tour having lunch there as well and they offered to feed us. It was a delicious pasta dish. They were touring in the super cool Russian 4wd vans. It would have been a great spot to camp but we needed to make more miles before stopping.
Tomorrow is going to be another tough day of all dirt. I really hope we don't see any deep sand - but I'm guessing we will.
Camping in the Steppe.
Mark clowning around with a sheep skeleton.
The road ahead.
Beautiful stop for lunch by a stream.
Lunch with the German tour group.
One of the many creek crossings.
No comments:
Post a Comment