Tsetserleg

Both Alan and myself managed to cook ourselves in the sun for our rest day in Kharkorum. I managed to spy some interesting things while we were here though. A Mongolian family was packing up their camp while Alan was in town looking for internet, and they were throwing their scraps away. This attracted the attention of about five dogs and seven eagles which started to compete with each other for the scraps. The eagles were swooping within a metre of the family trying to grab the primo scraps and were even having a go at the stray dogs to try and shove them off. This kept me entertained for a good hour until the show was over and the eagles started hunting small birds. I've never seen so many eagles as over here. I wasn't bored for long after this as a local accidently drove his car into the river (no harm done) and i was thoroughly entertained for another two hours watching them trying to pull it out. Shortly after, two guys come storming past on their horses, and one of the horses goes banana's and the rider falls heavily. We thought he was dead because he wasn't moving at all. To our relief he starts to twitch, gets up, staggers around and then mounts his horse and goes storming off again! This country is full of entertainment!
This morning we departed Kharkorum for a 140km trip to Tsetserleg. Its been HOT and riding has been tiring. The roads here are hard on the body, bike and mind. Today was mostly dirt riding and spent about 6 hours navigating potholes, potholes, corrugations, potholes, the odd marmot hole and more potholes. The bikes are still holding together well and we made it to Tsetserleg no problem. Mongolian towns are not what you would call pretty, however Tsetserleg could be described as such. Fairly vast rock formations surround the town and there are trees!! There are not many trees in Mongolia and we relished stopping in the shade of some (yes shade!) on our way here. We have decided to get a room here as when we camp one of us usually stays to look after our stuff...so its a little hard to do stuff together in town without a room to put our stuff. The room is...well...very Russian, but with an onsuite (but the primo toilet and shower doesn't work). Great! Photos are a little hard to post we have found due to unreliable computers so words might have to do until we get back to Ulan Bataar in a week. Tomorrow we are off to the White Lake! >>Matt

Kharkhorin

So far 360km and no mechanical problems. Things are looking good. The first stretch of our westward roadtrip was on Sunday from Ulaanbataar to the small town of Lun was mostly off-road. The main road between these towns is being repaired so all the traffic (and there is quite a lot) basically makes it's own road, meaning that there is a maze of tracks, some good, some not so good for 60km. This was no problem for the AG100's and we had a successful days riding with a good lunch at a small restuarant in the middle of nowhere while a thunderstorm brewed around us. We refuelled at Lun and then rode another 30km west through sheets of rain and occassional thunder to an amazing camping spot. The camp was on the edge of all the wet weather blowing down from Siberia and we only had a few showers before the skies cleared. After a dinner of chinese noodles (carried all the way from Beijing), we had an early night. We awoke yesterday to sunshine and clear skies and thought we might take an alternative route on one of the backroads away from the major sealed road. This proved interesting with many tracks to choose from and all seeminly leading in the right direction, but we weren't so sure. There was also much sand and gravel which made the going slow. After an hour or two, and only travelling 5km closer to our destination, we decided to use the main road and following that all the way to Kharkhorin. We again lunched at a roadside stop. As all menus are in Mongolian, we play potluck with lunch and just point at something on the menu and hope it is edible. Our potluck method has worked well so far and you can't go too wrong as the menu mainly consists of variations of meat, onions and potato. We have also been drinking the local heavily salted milk tea with meals which we are starting to get used to. Matt wasn't quite sure after drinking the first cup, but it hasn't resulted in any belly troubles yet. Last night we had dinner with a Swiss cyclist here in Kharkhorin. He has ridden from Kurdistan, through Kazakhstan on his own and gave us a good idea of the road conditions ahead. He only has a beer and a bowl of chips for dinner after cycling most of the day! I think his appetite is completely opposite to mine after cycling for a day! We have a nice campsite beside a river and will stay in Kharkhorin today to relax and do some sightseeing. The river is warm so we will swim a bit today I think and get clean after two days of riding. Tomorrow we will depart for Tsetserleg and then continue on to the Great White Lake (Terghin Tsagan Nuur) to spend a day or two there. It is supposed to be one of the most beautiful lakes in Mongolia with many good camps. Communications is proving easy with mobile phone reception at many locations and internet in most major town, so we will be posting often. Alan.

We are away!

Ok. It's taken us three days to get ready to hit the road. We are pretty happy with that. Today Al and myself did a bit of sightseeing around Ulan Bataar, bought a English/Mongolian dictionary to go with our phrase book, sent some postcards and hit the black market to source some final bits and bobs for the bikes. I even managed to successfully use some of the language in sentance form...and they understood..ALRIGHT! We are both pretty exhausted from organising so much in the last couple of days and i'm really ready to hear silence in the more remote areas. Tomorrow we head off for Khakorum, the old Mongolian capital, which is about 360km east of Ulan Bataar. We will probably do this in a couple of days. After that we will ride onto Tsetserleg and then will continue on to Tsaagan Nuur (Lake) which is supposed to be one of the most pretty lakes in the country. We will probably camp there a couple of nights. Not sure how often we will hit the net from here but we will try. We have to be back in Ulan Bataar for the 1000km service anyway. The place we are staying is just full of bikers at the moment...and we have the weeniest girly men bikes of them all! Tomorrow i will wear my toughest dress on departure to show them bastards! >Matt

We have motorbikes!!

After a very comfy nights sleep in an authentic ger we woke to sunshine in Ulaanbataar. We met up with our guide for the day at 10am and began the search for the most important part of the trip, motorbikes...the good news...we purchased motorbikes within 2 hours of starting to look. First stop was a Mercedes Benz dealer in northern UB that just happened to have a 2 week old Yamaha motorbike dealership inside. The Yamaha place is run by very helpful Germans (and Mongolians) from the Mercedes part of the business and after a chat with the german manager of the place we had negotiated the purchase of two brand new Yamaha AG100 bikes (they were still in the box this morning) on a buyback arrangement where we sell them back to the dealer at the completion of travels. This is so perfect and couldn't have worked out better. We have bikes that weigh only 99 kilo, are extremely fuel efficient and are built for farm use so are basically bullet proof. Even better, the bikes are red and black which matches Matt's helmet, enduro suit and bags...very stylish. The bikes are being assembled today and will be provided with full Mongolian registration tomorrow, so we just sling the panniers on and ride. Battling the Ulaanbataar traffic is going to be interesting and so far my impression of their driving prowess is that they are even worse than Nepali taxi drivers which is not good. With some care and the comfort of GPS directions we should be able to make it back to the guesthouse. We also managed to squeeze in some sight seeing today around central Ulaanbataar and saw the parlimentary building that was smashed and burned in the recent riots. We lunched at an authentic Mongolian meat (makkkkkkkkkt!) BBQ restuarant, purchased snuff bottles to greet all the rural ger dwellers (some customs to get used to) and toured the black market to buy some tools. All this was achieved with the help of a friendly Mongolian driver/guide and his girlfriend interpreter. All going well we collect the bikes tomorrow and make plans to depart Ulaanbataar for the steppe. -Al-

Arrive Mongolia

We managed to have our fair share of duck before we left Beijing..well worth the hunt and cycled on our trusty chinese steeds around the hootongs to find wierd stuff to eat and look at. Our duck meal was accompanied by 12 percent beers that were 750ml...the Chinese sure know how to get drunk. Fortuntely we only had one each because we didn't want it to affect our mono skills on our most awsome bikes. Had an early start for the train yesterday and didn't have too much trouble finding the right train which was nice. Alan gets credit points for remembering the bogroll for the wait at the train station and subsequent trip on the train. What a genius. The trip from Beijing to Ulan Bataar was somewhere around 34 hours with a 6 hour stop at the border to check passports, change the wheels on all the carriages (different gauges between countries) and most importantly change the dining carriage from a Chinese one to a Mongolian one! Alan and me were smart enough to get off the train while they were doing this because they locked all the toilets while they changed wheels which took four hours. All this while keeping the passengers locked in who didn't get off. Holding onto wee for 6 hours....not good. The train trip was spectacular. The variety in scenery is amazing. My favourite part of the trip i think was when we were passing through the desert and the train would kick up heaps of dust and fill the carriages with dust and then you would breath the dust and try to sleep. Yes that was definately my favourite part. We just Arrived in Ulan Bataar, unknowingly paid way too much for a taxi (i now have a hitlist of people who have scammed us...i'll show them and think REALLY BAD THOUGHTS about them tonight....haha..suckers). We have hired an interpreter tomorrow to help us find motorbikes, going to check out a couple of bike shops and the blackmarket (that is what is called...i'm serious). Hopefully we can sort something tomorrow. >>Matt

Leaving Beijing

Beijing has been hot and today was the hottest. Matt and I hired bicycles again to cruise the streets and taste the food in some of the hutongs. Beijing has been great so far and really surprising. Plenty of smells, people are great, good food, some bike lanes as wide as a freeway, good parks to rest in during the hot afternoons. So far we have seen Mao's Mausoleum, the Forbidden Palace, Tiananmen Square, many parks...much peddling, walking. Matt spotted a Sichuan restuarant today and I had a solid dose of spice. Matt said it was hot food and up to the standards of the best sichuan restuarant in Melbourne...I survived and even enjoyed it. We are on the train to Mongolia at 7:30am tomorrow morning and I am looking forward to seeing some of China from the train window. It will be a 32 hour ride, so a good chance to sleep and learn a little bit of Mongolian. Next post from Ulaanbaatar!

Arrive Beijing

All is well. We got here, but not after Alan demolishing just about all the food they had on the airplane. I think he ate non-stop the whole way. Everything is brand new in this city and very clean (including the air..today) and few cars on the road. Had a bit of trouble finding our accommodation and spent a bit of time wandering the backstreets at midnight with all our motorcycle crap trying to find the joint..i couldn't sleep the night before we left and cant sleep on planes so hadn't slept for two days. Our double room we booked at the hostel only had one giant double bed (all cool being brothers) but i made Alan promise he woudn't hug me in the night thinking i was Genevieve. My skin isn't as soft, he would wake up rather disappointed. Today we hired pushbikes and hit the city....the best way to get around. There are giant bike lanes everywhere so its a sinch. Alan followed his nose to a bakery quickly and we had a great dumpling lunch..top notch. Temp is about 30 and humid...i needed to borrow Alans sunnies because the reflection off our white skin was giving me a migraine. Longneck beers are less than a dollar...happiness!