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