The Gobi: desert camp near Choir to Ikh Gazriin Chuluu

We start the morning in the shade thanks to our bunker hole and ride the last stretch of paved road to Choir. This town is like many other Mongolian towns, dusty, not attractive and a maze of roads. We turn west at Choir and stop outside a fire station that happens to be the best looked after place in the entire town. The firefighters appear in crisp clean uniforms and one of them even speaks english! We ask directions to our first waypoint town, Gov-Ugtal, and ride into the desert on a gravelly track with a completely featureless and barren horizon in front of us. As we leave Choir the wind starts to strengthen from the north provided a challenging crosswind that causes havoc with my riding later in the day. The tracks are initially fast and easy to navigate. We past lonely ger camps and abandoned buildings of long forgotten settlements. Surprisingly the air temperature is cold and and we need to zip up all vents on the enduro suits to keep warm. After about 3 hours riding we reach Gov-Ugtal which is hidden amongst sandy hills. The desert is getting a little greener now and we see herds of goats and horses. As usual a renter-crowd of locals swarms on Matt to check out the bikes as I am searching for food. We are pretty good now at saying 'Yamaha is good bike' and 'no you can't buy my bike' through hand gestures and broken english. I find no places to eat, so we are reduced once again to buying a jar of pickles and eating these with biscuits while watching goats snack on other green edible things in the distance. The pickles tasted all right. The wind was really getting strong now and blowing a gale. From Gov-Ugtal we rode to Ikh Gazriin Chuluu, a small range of granite rock formations to the southwest. On this stretch we had the most challenging riding yet. Tracks were sand or a thick layer of pea sized gravel which made handling the bike at any speed perilous. Add to this the gale-force cross wind that we were fighting against and it was lucky if we actually stayed on the track. At one point a dust devil crossed the track into the path of Matt's bike and pushed him into the sand and shrubs off the track. While crossing a section of loose gravel, a gust of wind swept my front tyre from under me and the bike and I spun 360 degrees to a stop in a pall of dust. Luckily no damage or injury thanks to my padded knees and I continue on a little shaken up and riding slowly. Thankfully we eventually see the rock formations of Ikh Gazriin Chuluu in the distance and breath a sigh of relief. We find our ger camp for the night without trouble and have a good meal before wandering to explore the rocks. The place is fascinating and a perfect spot to see the sunset over the desert. We head to bed exhausted and sleep restlessly to the sound of the wind. Alan.