Russia – Travelling The Silk Road

03/11/2018

The way back

Hah! We bet you didn’t expect a blog post anymore!

Tom’s finally gotten around to writing the last one, so congrats for still checking on us! Or more likely, for receiving an update email…

While we took notes of what we encountered on our way back to Europe, most of the time was spent driving. So this post might get a bit boring. It’ll be more of a log really, a diary for us to remember the long road home.

Let’s see, where did we leave you last time? We were still in Mongolia (which seems like eons ago now…), getting ready to start the long ride home…

Friday, the 27^th of July: UB

We spent the day in UB, mostly shopping for souvenirs. There was also a new dinosaur museum, which Tom thoroughly enjoyed. Along the way we also visited the national Mongolian museum, which shed some more light on the fascinating history of this country.

(Wafa’s best impression of a dinosaur.)

(Now we know where Star Wars found their inspiration.)

Saturday, the 28^th of July: UB – Sukhbaatar (350km)

After saying goodbye to the nice people in the hostel (most importantly Rocky, our guide for our Mongolian trip, and Jamie, friendly Dutch fellow-traveler), we got on the road. Drove all the way to the Mongolian-Russian border, to a town called Sukhbaatar. On the way we visited a traditional bow ‘factory’, which consisted of a guy and his workshop. Very artisanal indeed.

Sukhbaatar itself is hardly worth mentioning. Bland little town, with a hotel that manages to be relatively new and rundown at the same time. Quite the feat.

Sunday, the 29^th of July: Sukhbaatar – Lake Baikal (500km)

Our second Russian transit visa started on Sunday, so we headed to the border and got in line. While we crossed the Mongolian part relatively easy, the Russians were a lot more thorough. Had to unpack most of our stuff.

We passed the last ‘Asian’ town on our way to Lake Baikal, Ulan-Ude. In hindsight, it was really strange to notice the division between ‘Asian’ and ‘European’ people: Mongolia fully Asian, as soon as you cross the border there’s a mix, and by the time you get to Lake Baikal, it’s like you’re in Europe: only ethnic Russians to be found. If you look at the map, that’s way to the east of where we expected Caucasian people to be the standard! As we would learn on the way, Russian explorers colonized this stretch of Siberia already in the 17^th and 18^th century, so it’s thoroughly Russian. Unlike Kazakhstan for example, which was only added to the Russian imperial empire in the early 19^th century.

While driving on the shores of Lake Baikal, we also tried the local delicacy of Omul. This is a smoked fish, a cousin of our salmon, which is deliciously tender and juicy… Tom’s salivating again just by writing this down 🙂

Our hotel was nice, but the price started feeling European again, which was less nice. Built like a giant log cabin, we had some nice borscht and beers. Omnomnom.

Monday, the 30^th of July: Lake Baikal – Irkutsk (200km)

Driving on windy roads bordering the lake, it took us 3 hours to arrive in Irkutsk. We quickly found the local Suzuki dealer, which changed our shock absorbers for a measly 70€. At this point, Suzy had to have been in better shape than when we had left Belgium. Or so we thought…

(The new absorbers were made in Belgium! Kinda funny, exported to Russia, we imported them back to Belgium…)

By the time the Suzuki guys got finished, it was late afternoon, and we checked into our hostel in the centre of the city. Irkutsk is a pleasant place for an evening stroll, eating some good omul and buying Siberian honey.

Tuesday, the 31^st of July: Irkutsk – Tayshet (650km)

Nothing to report. Lots of driving. We checked into a roadside motel and had an instant noodle dinner. The Siberian landscapes were somewhat hypnotizing though: endless shrubbery, pine forests and good roads (thankfully). More villages along the way than we had expected, too.

(Tom’s optimistic attempts at driveby photography mostly resulted in pictures of Siberian gates.)

Wednesday, the 1^st of August: Tayshet – Mariinsk (770km)

Again, nothing to report. Even more driving. Checked into a nice little hotel in a small city. Had takeaway dinner.

Thursday, the 2^nd of August: Mariinsk – Novosibirsk (430km)

While Novosibirsk is the 3^rd city of Russia, we mostly found it very bland. We do remember having some very good food in the Beerman restaurant though (located in the local Hilton ^^). Tom enjoyed a half liter Affligem beer as well. Finally back to civilization, indeed!

Friday, the 3^rd of August: Novosibirsk – Omsk (650km)

We enjoyed Omsk more than we had Novosibirsk. Pleasant city, dating back to the early 18^th century, with some sort of festival going on. Good beer, good noodles and a brand new hostel.

Saturday, the 4^th of August: Omsk – Lake Burabay (450km)

This was the last day of our second Russian transit visa, so we crossed into Kazakhstan again, through what had to have been one of the easiest crossings of the whole trip. Russia and Kazakhstan have some sort of customs union thing going on, so crossing over we were almost waved through. On the Kazakh side of the border, Maps.me gave us the option of a shortcut again, which we happily followed. After all, we were in the civilized world again, how bad could it be?

… Pretty bad, as it turned out. As we passed endless stretches of farmland, the road started degrading until it turned into little more than a cart track. Thankfully, not too many potholes (we’d had enough of those for a lifetime). We arrived at our destination, lake Burabay, around 6 in the evening. Big surprise though: this turned out to be one of the major tourist destinations in all of the glorious nation of Kazakhstan. On a Saturday evening in summer. So finding a place to sleep turned out to be very difficult indeed. After a very, very frustrating evening (during which we asked for room prices in a 5 star hotel casino (“400€ for one night? Such a shame, just above our budget…”) and considered camping next to the lake, surrounded by Siberian killer mosquitoes and drunk Russians) we finally found a place to sleep at 9.30PM. A crappy room and wedding party music blaring from upstairs. We’d had better nights… :p

Sunday, the 5^th of August: Lake Burabay – Astana (250km)

After a week of almost nonstop driving, we wanted to stretch our legs a bit, so we decided to climb one of the hills next to the lake. The hill turned out to be rather steep and slippery though, so we turned back after half an hour. We were still a bunch of lazy tourists, after all!

After a refreshing swim in the lake, we headed to Astana. The road turned out to be some of the nicest highway since… Iran, probably? Without Iranian madmen driving on it, too!

Arriving in Astana in later afternoon, we hit up the local ATM and found ourselves a delicious Uzbek restaurant. Giant dishes of horsemeat plov and chicken lachman… Mmmm…

(Also: interesting interior design.)

Monday, the 6^th of August: Astana

On our first day off since UB, we rented some bikes and did a little tour of the city. We went to the local mall (shaped like a giant yurt) and drove over the central Astana boulevard. While the architecture in this city was certainly… interesting, it all felt very artificial. Until 1997, Astana was a provincial backwater, with not even 100 000 residents. That year, however, the president of Kazakhstan decided to make Astana his new capital (mostly in a bid to keep the ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan from seceding, apparently). Combined with the oil dollars that started flowing in, Astana now resembles some sort of Dubai in the middle of the steppe. Or so we think, having never actually been to Dubai…

Tuesday, the 7^th of August: Astana

We slept late and went for lunch in a nearby Asian fusion restaurant. Very nice indeed. Afterwards, we went to the Russian embassy to arrange our third (and final) Russian transit visa. The embassy lady was not very friendly, however. We had asked for 9 days to do our last transit, as we hoped to see a bit of Moscow and St-Petersburg along the way. She was adamant that we could only get 6 days, however, considering the distance we would travel. Citing car problems (which would turn out to be all too real), we tried to persuade her to give us a bit more. She got a bit annoyed with us though, saying ‘If I want visa in Europe, also problem!’. Whatever, we’d just asked nicely for it, no need to get all offensive.

We had dinner in the same Asian fusion restaurant, which also served some nice (and cheap) cocktails!

Wednesday, the 8^th of August: Astana – Oktyabrskoe (500km)

We were told we could pick up our Russian visa at noon, at which point we were pleasantly surprised we could stay in Russian 9 days anyway. Thank you, strangely passive aggressive embassy lady!

We still had about 2000km to travel in Kazakhstan, so we got on the road quickly. Making good time (no more shortcuts from here on out…), we arrived at a roadside motel in the evening.

Driving through this part of the world was a challenge in itself: we’d driven through deserts before, but these were limited in scope, you might say. A few hundred kilometers and you’re through them. The next couple of days were something else though: landscapes that were completely empty, but for the steppe and the skies, thousands of kms on end.

Thursday, the 9^th of August: Oktyabrskoe – Qarabutaq (760km)

Drive, drive, drive. From 9AM to 6PM. Roadside motel.

Friday, the 10^th of August: Qarabutaq – Aktobe (225km)

Short drive. Spent the rest of the day resting. Nothing much to do in Aktobe.

Saturday, the 11^th of August: Aktobe – Uralsk (475km)

Very boring drive. We stayed in a local DAF truck center, which had a hotel attached to it (?).

Sunday, the 12^th of August: Uralsk

We had the day off in Uralsk, as our Russian visa only started on the 13^th. We slept late and wanted to go to the lake, but when we got to the car, we noticed oil leaking from underneath it… Turned out to be a good choice to have a safety margin for our Russian visa. We found a local car shop (open on Sundays!) and they inspected the car. While they found out there was a problem between the engine block and the crank shaft, causing oil to spill, they probably also fucked up the water pump, somehow. As coolant started leaking on the floor while Suzy was hanging in the air. Lucky for us, they had all the necessary parts… We could hardly make a scene, as we still needed them to fix Suzy up, but it felt rather bitter having to pay for something they probably caused.

Monday, the 13^th of August: Uralsk

We had hoped to cross the border, but as noon turned into dusk, we were still waiting for Suzy to be fixed. Replacing the rubber ring in the crankshaft necessitated taking off the whole thing, which made for some pretty cool pictures though:

Finally, at 6.30PM, we got Suzy back. As it was too late to cross over now, we found another place to stay. Cheap, but rather smelly apartment…

Tuesday, the 14^th of August: Uralsk – Penza (700km)

We crossed the border early in the morning, so we could make up for lost time the day before. While waiting at the border, Tom noticed some oil was still leaking. It seemed to be less than before, so we drove on to Samara, where we had a local Suzuki dealer have a look. He told us the Uralsk guys appeared to have done a pretty bad job replacing the rubber band… Fuck it! They couldn’t replace it though, as they would have to order the parts we needed. Told us to check the oil level regularly while driving.

We made it all the way to Penza, which meant that we crossed two time zones in one day, by car!

Wednesday, the 15^th of August: Penza – Moscow (650km)

While leaving Penza, we noticed there was now also an engine belt squeaking its head off. What the flying f*ck. Shit just kept piling up :’). At this point, we would have been happy if we’d just made it back to Europe. Our travel insurance covered car breakdowns all over Europe, which was now just over 1000 km away…

We later learned that squeaky belts are no problem onto themselves, though. Being the mechanical novices we are, we didn’t know this, so it did no one’s nerves any good.

When we arrived in Moscow, it had started raining. And by raining, I mean flooded-streets-and-hardly-see-anything raining. By the time we got to the city center (quite some traffic jams) and checked into our hostel, the evening dinner we had been looking forward to, almost turned into a midnight snack. But we had made it! Moscow! Europe! Civilization! Transportation in case of car breakdowns!

(Crazy light at dusk.)

Thursday, the 16^th of August: Moscow

We got feedback from the Uralsk car shop, and they told us it was quite normal there was still some oil leaking. It should eventually stop. A quick check underneath Suzy seemed to confirm this. The squeaky belt had turned into full-on cat strangling at this point though :’).

Taking another day of from driving, we visited the highlights of the city. The Red Square, St Basil Cathedral, a walk around the Gum shopping mall, a tour of the nicest subway stations… After a couple of weeks cooped up in the car, our legs started seriously hurting by the end of the day.

(Russians have a thing for naked saints, apparently.)

(The GUM shopping mall used to be a Soviet department store, but is now occupied by all sorts of luxury brands.)

(Nice touch: the marble on the walls matches the meat in the store!)

Friday, the 17^th of August: Moscow – Ushaki (650km)

Before noon, we took our time to visit the Kremlin proper. The cathedrals, the Diamond Fund (some of the largest diamonds of the Imperial collection!)… All very impressive. All in all, we were rather pleasantly surprised by Moscow (and Russia in general, to be honest): especially Tom expected a more depressing, unfriendly city and country. But it turned out that, at least in summer, Russia and Moscow are really beautiful and, at times, interesting places to visit.

We left the city around 1PM and drove all the way to St-Petersburg, sleeping in a little town with a quaint blue church some 50kms outside of the city.

Saturday, the 18^th of August: Ushaki – St Petersburg (50km)

We were immediately struck by the difference between Moscow and St-Petersburg: while Moscow has its historic core, the rest of the town center is mostly new to brand new buildings. St-Petersburg on the other hand, has retained more of its original character. We quickly planned out a walking tour. This took us from the Fabergé Museum (Fabergé eggs!), to the Kazan Cathedral (huge!), the Church on Spilled Blood (mosaics!), the Winter Palace (green!), the statue of Peter the Great (statuesque!) and St Isaac’s Cathedral (also huge!).

(At the end of the day, Tom’s shoes looked like this.)

After an exhausting day, we booked tickets for the Swan Lake ballet in the Mariinsky Theatre on Monday (because, when in St-Petersburg…) and went looking for dinner. We wound up in the Soviet Café, which aimed to recreate the Soviet era atmosphere. We sincerely doubt many people had such excellent food in those troubled times, though; delicious borscht, herring and beet salad, dumplings and many others found their way into our thankful bellies…

Sunday, the 19^th of August: St Petersburg

We basically spent the whole day in the Hermitage. Probably second only to the British Museum and the Louvre in the breadth and depth of its collections, we saw many items we recognized from cultures encountered on our travels: Sassanid (Iranian) silverware, Soghdian wall paintings, Mongolian religious artefacts… Lovely!

(Creepy Siberian dead people…)

(This Qajar era painting of an Iranian woman is a bit less modest than what we saw in Iran…)

Monday, the 20^th of August: St Petersburg

On our last day off without any driving, we slept late and afterwards headed out to see the Peter & Paul fortress, the traditional military bulwark of the city. While it certainly has its merits (the church contains the graves off all Russian tsars since Peter the Great, including the murdered family of Nicholas II), it lacked the kind of grandiose highlights or exhibits we’d come to expect of St-Petersburg.

(There was also a space museum, with a used Soyuz module! Almost as awesome as Tom’s icecream!)

In the evening we went to the Mariinsky Theatre to see the Swan Lake. While Wafa thoroughly enjoyed her night out, Tom quickly gave up on ever finding the appeal in a bunch of tight-clad men and women jumping around on a stage. Yes, there were some nice or even beautiful scenes. But all in all, 3 hours is way too long to be watching what is basically a silent puppet show.

Tuesday, the 21^st of August: St-Petersburg – Tartu (350km)

On our final day in Russia, we wanted to visit Catherine the Great’s palace outside St-Petersburg. When we got there though, it was closed for the day :-/ Should’ve looked it up first, I guess. But really, who closes their museum on a Tuesday?

Lucky for us, there was also the Peterhof nearby, which is basically the palace of Peter the Great. Apparently you can’t visit it on the inside though, which (again) we didn’t know. As it was a very rainy day, we didn’t feel much like strolling around the gardens.

We left early for Estonia. Which was a good call, as the lines to cross the border stretched way back. The crossing itself went fast (Estonians seemed quite surprised to see a Belgian passport though). And that was it! We were back in the EU! Last real border crossing of the whole trip!

Wednesday, the 22^nd of August: Tartu – Riga (250km)

Most unnoticeable border crossing of the whole trip (in the middle of a village). Visit Riga. Nice old town. Just strolling around, drinking, eating…

Thursday, the 23^rd of August: Riga – Bialystok (500km)

Drive from Riga to Kaunas (Lithuania). Spend a couple of hours. Drive on to Bialystok (Poland). Last time changing money (bloody Poles and their Zlotys…).

Friday, the 24^th of August: Bialystok – Warsaw (300km)

Go to Bialowieza forest. National park closed without guide :(. Stroll through not national park. See bison in reserve.

Drive on towards Warsaw. Find nice motel just past the city. Last dinner is pizza and grilled pork neck… mmm…

Saturday, the 25^th of August: Warsaw – Home (1250km)

Idea is to drive 700 km to Magdenburg, Germany. Once we pass Berlin (around 2 PM), we decide fuck it, drive on to Belgium. After a whole day of driving (9AM-10.30PM) and 1250 km, we arrive in Belgium!

27/07/201827/07/2018

Russia and Mongolia – Nomadic travelling

Warning: monster post

Thursday, the 5^th of July

Our previous post left off while we were waiting for Suzy to be fixed in Oskemen, Kazakhstan. As we had hoped, work on Suzy was finished around 5.30PM. Because they had replaced the ball joints, we still needed to get the front wheels aligned again in another shop across town. So we finally left Oskemen around 6.30PM. We immediately felt the difference: steering felt more rigid again. Before, Suzy had felt a bit shaky on her wheels in the corners. So we were quite happy, driving through the Kazakhstan countryside during the golden hour 🙂 . In the end, we decided not to cross over to Russia straight away, but instead get a hotel right before the border, in Shemonaika. We mostly saw ethnic Russians here (being close to the Russian border), but people were really nice and friendly (not the typical rude behavior we expected, based on experiences with Russian tourists abroad).

Friday, the 6^th of July

As we explained earlier, our transit visa for Russia started on the 5^th, running to the 8^th. Having already lost a day, of course we got under way quickly on Friday, at 11AM 🙂 . A few kilometers down the road we came across the border post. Or more correctly, the traffic jam leading to it… Long story short, we only crossed into Russia at 3PM!

We wanted to drive all the way to Barnaul, the only big city in the region, so 6 hours and 500 km later, we pulled over near guest house Izba. Russian roads were surprisingly good, not at all what we expected from Siberia! We found a ‘French’ restaurant near to the guest house, which served decent seafood pasta and fish soup (even while 1000s of km from any ocean).

(Good roads and lots and lots of agriculture. Just endless fields.)

When we got back to our guest house, our fellow guests had some bad news: apparently the Russian-Mongolian border was supposed to be closed in the weekend. Saturday and Sunday. FUUUCK! Some frantic googling later, we gathered that it was only closed on Sundays. Still, that left us in a conundrum: do we speed to the border the next day, or just risk overstaying our visa and crossing only on Monday (apparently the repercussions include a fine and a lot of hassle)? In the end, we decided to go with the first option. So we quickly went to bed at 12 (and missed the epic Belgium-Brazil game… 🙁 ), and…

Saturday, the 7^th of July

… Got up again at 5AM. Google Maps told us it would be a 10 hour drive to the border (750 km), so we could get there at 3PM. The border was only open until 6PM, so that didn’t leave a lot of margin. We started driving through misty Siberian fields, with the sun rising slowly. Luckily the Russian roads kept being awesome, so we made good time. Around the town of Byisk though, our windshield got hit twice by pebbles from the car in front of us. One of the ‘stars’ turned into a big nasty crack down the windshield, so that needs replacement… We drove on through the Altai mountain region, which has lush green mountains, and nice windy roads to speed down. No stopping for breakfast or lunch, we just ate cookies along the way. Only stop twice for fuel breaks. In the end we make it to the border at 3PM, exactly as predicted by Google Maps. We made it! And also spent just 24 hours in Russia (doing 1250km in the meantime)! But then the waiting starts…

(Russian Altai.)

In the end, it took us 5 hours to cross into Mongolia, which was apparently quite fast. We heard from others it took them 8-9 hours. While waiting, Tom noticed the rubber on one of the new ball joints had been almost completely ripped off already. Not looking good! So when we finally were going through Mongolian customs (at around 8PM), both of us are quite on edge. When we get pulled into an immigration office, because of ‘small problem with visa’ we are just about to cry. Long day, lots of misfortune, lots of waiting, no food… It’s getting to us!

(Rubberless versus normal ball joint.)

The problem with the visa turns out to be a wrong date somewhere. It says we can enter Mongolia until the 20^th of September (3 months after we applied for the visa), while it should be the 19^th. We try to explain that we’re crossing now, on the 7^th of July, so it doesn’t matter. ‘No no, this is incorrect, needs to be changed’. What the fuck? In the end, the correction consists of just scrapping the wrong date with a pen in our passports, then writing ‘19’ instead. Yeah… That looks official?

Whatever, by 8.30PM we’re finally across the border, only 100km to go to Olgii, where we want to spend the night. We drive carefully over part paved/unpaved roads, finally winding down for the night in a ger/yurt camp in the middle of the city. We meet Jamie again, the Dutch guy we met before in Bishkek, and have a beer to decompress. Whatever the problems with the car, we’ll try to get things fixed the day after…

(Typical Mongolian road. If you look closely, you can see the ‘washboard’: the road surface has small waves in it, which cause the car to vibrate violently. It’s best to drive fast over it, so that you kind of ‘fly’ over the waves.)

Sunday, the 8^th of July

Early next day, we get feedback from the car shop in Oskemen that the ball joint should be ok to drive on all the way to UB (Ulaanbaatar). Good news indeed. We’d like a second opinion though, so we try to arrange a mechanic through our ger camp. As he never shows up, Tom takes the car to a nearby car shop to let them have a look.

With minimal Russian and lots of gesturing, we ask the mechanics if they think it should be ok to drive Suzy all the way to UB. And here we get to know a Mongolian custom we would run into lots of times: a lot of Mongolians will, if they can’t help you, simply say ‘no’ and then start ignoring you. Very frustrating if you’re trying to get some clarification!

We try to do some more planning for Mongolia, but it’s very difficult as we don’t know what we can or can’t do with Suzy. Very frustrating day indeed.

Monday, the 9^th of July

Early in the morning, the mechanic we asked for in the ger camp finally shows up. He confirms it should be ok to drive to UB with the rubberless ball joint, so that’s one worry less. Afterwards we get to the practical stuff: get a Mongolian SIM card, get some cash and a map of Mongolia. Wafa is quite fed up with us doing no sightseeing, so in the afternoon we go to the local museum and bazaar. Both quite dilapidated, but at least it’s something?

(The museum contained some ‘nicely’ stuffed animals, while the bazaar had an outdoor poor hall.)

When we get back to our place, there’s quite another sight: an older (and very crazy) French lady arrives, and immediately starts going off about her bad experiences in Mongolia. She has spent two months here, and calls it the worst experience of her life. Supposedly she has visited 184 countries in her lifetime (including a solo hitchhiking trip from France to Pakistan in the 80s, with a small baby boy in tow), so we can only hope she’s exaggerating when she describes everything that’s bad about Mongolia and Mongolians… We also meet a Croat guy, travelling by motorbike, that lost his license plate on the bad roads. He’s worried he can’t cross back into Russia again without it, joking that Putin will come to rape him in prison… Seems like a lot of people with bad stories here!

Tuesday, the 10^th of July

Whatever may come, we decide to make the most of it while we’re here. We’d read earlier about the festival of Naadam, which is held all over Mongolia around this time of year. In Olgii (where we’re staying) it’s kicking off with the archery event. A group of fellow guests decide to go check it out with us. So after a classic 2 eggs breakfast, we all head towards the festival grounds. It turns out we’re just about the only spectators. Quite nice: chill atmosphere, lots of guys in gaudy costumes and no hassle!

Sidenote: we’re in Western Mongolia. This area is mostly populated by ethnic Kazakhs. They have a culture that is quite unique: different from the rest of Mongolia, but also from Kazakhstan (where the original ethnic culture was largely destroyed by communism). One of the Kazakh specialties is eagle hunting. Of course we want to check this out!

So in the afternoon we drive to the nearby village of Sagsai (over some atrocious roads, but Suzy seems to hold out). We were told by our ger camp hosts to ask for a guy named Arman the eagle hunter. We find his ger quite easily, but it appears Arman is out for a wedding feast somewhere. His brother is around though, and we get a demonstration from him. Very impressive! He also keeps a wolf cub. A bit sad: he plans on rearing it, then killing it for its fur once it’s fully grown…

After the demo, we’re invited by the family to go to the local Naadam (every village has its own). Different event here: wrestling! It’s very impressive yet also amusing to see these big guys go at each other in their skimpy little outfits. The design of the wrestling top dates back several hundreds of years, when an incognito female wrestler once beat all the male wrestlers. As the men were unable to bear the shame, wrestling with an open vest was mandatory from that point onwards, so that women would be detected straight away.

(Afterwards, we were invited back to the eaglehunter’s ger for tea.)

The rest of the evening: back in Olgii, we meet Harry again (biker we first met in Almaty). After dinner together, we watch the Belgium-France game (at 1AM) and go to bed really pissed off with the result.

Wednesday, the 11^th of July

The next Naadam event in Olgii was also wrestling. While Tom opted to stay at the ger to plan the trip and ducktape the car, Wafa went to see it with a group of fellow travelers. The wrestling itself was not as impressive as in Sagsai, but there was a nice opening ceremony for the Naadam festival. Traditional dance with a techno beat in the background was certainly… refreshing.

In the evening, we played card games with Harry, 2 Dutchies and one French biker. The favourite game of the night was Chinese fucking or pooping. Whatever you call it. Dutchies called it ‘boerenbridge’.

Thursday, the 12^th of July

The third (and last) event of Naadam was the horse racing. This has a bunch of 6 year olds on horses race across the great steppe plains for 25 miles! So of course we wanted to go see it!

We got to the finish line (10 km south of the city) early in the morning. There was a nice festival atmosphere, with lots of booths and gers for food, Chinese crap (here also) and some local singers. The views on the horse races were quite spectacular, as you see the jockeys coming in from miles away. Things would get quite heated around the finish line though (for reasons unknown). Whenever there was any commotion, the police brought out their tasers and started zapping in the air. So it made for some strange scenes: horses coming in, people cheering, sometimes a bit of a ruckus and then the sound of tasers in the background…

In the afternoon, we were treated to a few traditional Kazakh games: kiss-the-girl and kokpar. Whereas kiss-the-girl was quite lame (a boy tries to hold on to a girl while she whips him, both racing on horseback – here it seemed really tame), kokpar more than made up for it though. This game consists of two guys on horseback playing tug of war with a dead goat. If it sounds gruesome, it is. But also quite exhilarating!

Riders were thrown of horses, or they both held on so well that they just raced off over the next hill, legs were torn of the goat… It was a confusing but hilarious afternoon. All the excitement caused some rows, of course. Luckily the police was happily zapping away with their tasers.

By 4PM, the champion of kokpar had been determined (after the legless carcass of the goat had been torn in two – pelvis from ribcage). Earlier, we had decided we’d drive straight to UB to get the procedure for our Russian transit visa started again. The only official Suzuki dealer of Mongolia (with spare parts) is also located there. So we left our buddies at the Naadam grounds and got going again.

The first 60km were good new asphalt, with some nice views over mountains and lakes. After that, the new road was still under construction. What followed was a 100km over uneven terrain: sand pits, gravel, potholes, washboards… You name it, we had it. We arrived in Khovd late in the evening. While the hotel was great, the traditional Mongolian cuisine was a bit less: a noodle soup with bits of sheep floating in it. No vegetables whatsoever. Yummy.

Friday, the 13^th of July

Still 1600km to go to UB, so we left Khovd early. The first 450 km were over a newly paved road, so we made good time. No real views though:

(View behind us.)

(View in front of us.)

After the town of Altai, we got onto an unpaved road. 200km to go to our stay for the night, Uliastai. 50kms in, we hit a large rock while going pretty fast. We immediately felt there was something wrong with the tire: flat with a big gash in it! Not even sure whether this could still be fixed 🙁 .

So, 150km to the next village, on an increasingly worse road. We drove on for hours with clenched butt cheeks, I can tell you… After some really tough terrain for the last 50km (took us 2-3 hours), we finally made it to Uliastai at around 8.30PM. First we found a place to sleep, then we went to a Korean restaurant which looked pretty nice. We got our menus and sat down. But then Wafa heard Flemish! You have to imagine, this town really looked like the middle of nowhere, so it was quite funny to run into Gerrit and Nathalie, 2 Belgians who had just started their year-long trip.

After the long day (with added stress), we just wanted to eat something before going to bed. But suddenly it was no longer possible to order (too late). What the hell? Why did you give us the menu then? The waitress reverted to the age-old Mongolian tactic of just saying ‘no’ and ignoring us. Luckily Gerrit and Nathalie were kind enough to share their food with us (they had ordered 5 minutes earlier…). You can say what you want about the service, but the n° 4 was to die for!

Saturday, the 14^th of July

With no spare tire anymore, and still a 1000km to UB (of which 200 unpaved), we really wanted to replace the ruptured tire. So we started looking for a new set of tires, or a decent used one. It turned out Uliastai is not the place to do this, though. We soon found out that our tire size is quite an unusual one (235/60R16), which made the hunt for a new one very frustrating. In the end, one shop sold us a patch (‘Germany, very good quality’) and brought us to a tire repair shop.

The shop looked dodgy as fuck (literally a shack), with an even dodgier occupant. Sadly, no pictures as both our phones were dead at this point. Still, he patched up the tire from the inside and it seemed to hold. Yay!

Until we saw there was still some air bubbling out of the wet tire. Not properly fixed then? The tire repair guy got all grumpy and insisted it was ok. Nevertheless, he took it back inside, to try and seal it from the outside this time. He made mixture of superglue and cigarette ash and applied this to the gash in the tire. It seemed to hold, with no more air leaking out, so we called it a day.

We had dinner in the same Korean restaurant as the night before with our Belgian buddies again (n° 4, mmm…). Afterwards, we watched the game between Belgium and England for the 3^rd place in the world cup. We saw most of it, in between blackouts caused by a massive thunderstorm. Very happy with the result 🙂 .

Sunday, the 15^th of July

We were still quite anxious to drive with the patched up tire (having read online you shouldn’t try to fix tires with gashes like this one). But we had no choice, so continued our way to UB. The first 100kms of the day were over an unpaved potholed road again, in the pouring rain. Not the best conditions to drive in. But the tire held out, and after those first 100kms we got some good asphalt again to drive all the way to Tsetserleg, only 500km from UB.

We stayed in a crappy smelly overpriced hotel, where we met up with the two Dutch guys from Olgii again. Luckily the hotel had a decent restaurant, so we had a good night with beer, Korean food, laughter and games of Chinese fucking.

Monday, the 16^th of July

The last leg of our trip to UB was over good roads, so we were quite relaxed while driving. After about 100km we stopped in the town of Kharkhorin. It was a bland little town, but nearby once stood the capital of the largest empire in the history of mankind: Karakorum. Founded by Genghis Khan, it was once a center in world politics. Nothing much remains though. The stones of the old town were used to erect the Buddhist monastery of Erdene Zuun in the 16^th century. We visited this monastery complex, but large parts of it were also destroyed, in the communist purges of 1937. Still, it was our first contact with an eastern religion on this trip, and it made us realize just how far we had come 🙂 !

In the evening we arrived in UB. After 27500km in just 4 months, we made it to the original destination of our trip! No time to celebrate though: weaving through the dense traffic, we still had to find a place to sleep for the night, and preferably also something to eat.

We’d read on iOverlander about a nice place for overlanders on the other side of town, so we tried our luck there. What we found was a bit funny: it looked like a convention of Monster Trucks fanatics, with mostly German giant camper trucks. Little Suzy looked completely out of place between these monsters. Still, they had a free room (even if way overpriced), so we parked her inside the gate and called it a night. Dinner was again Korean (our new favourite kitchen!).

Tuesday and Wednesday, the 17^th – 18^th of July

The next two days were mostly spent patching Suzy up. To refresh your memory: in Kazakhstan we had some work done on her. The rear wheel bearings and engine mounts were replaced, and new ball joints installed. By the time we got to UB, one of those ball joints needed fixing, we needed a new windshield and also a new set of tires.

So we got to work straight away: on Tuesday we went to the Suzuki shop, which had some good news. The ball joint was still ok, they could just replace the rubber! They also put in a new stabilizer (the other one broke down in Tajikistan, remember?) and some other worn down rubbers. Over an hour’s work and we just paid 20€. They even gave us a free lunch in their canteen! They told us we should take care not to drive to rivers with the ball joint, as it might get wet inside. Lucky for us, it had started raining old wives in UB, turning the streets into wild muddy streams…

Afterwards we drove all over UB to find new tires, which cost us hours. Traffic here is absolutely ridiculous: crossing from one end of the city to the other will take you 1-2 hours. We did it three times that day… In the end we found a set of 2 used tires, in excellent condition (with the help of a friendly Mongolian Christian Samaritan). By the time these were installed, it was 9.30PM and we were quite knackered. So we said ‘fuck it’, got dinner in the KFC and booked ourselves the most fancy hotel of the whole trip, the Ramada. The bed was amazing, the shower refreshing and the beer in the 17^th floor rooftop bar delicious. Quite a productive day!

(By now, the glue-cigarette ash mix had mostly worn off from our ruptured tire.)

(Tire salesgirl.)

Next morning, we went to the Russian embassy first, to apply for our transit visa. And lo and behold, we ran into our favourite Dutch guy again, Jamie! He was also staying in UB to get his truck fixed up, and pointed us towards a nice hostel to spend the next night.

After this, we decided we would try to get the windshield replaced. The Suzuki guys had recommended a place, which looked a bit dodgy when we got there. But again looks deceived: these guys were superfast, very professional and obviously knew what they were doing. In half an hour we were in and out. Last thing to do on our list: get the new tires balanced. We spent a couple of hours driving around UB again to find a good place, but got Suzy some nicely balanced tires in the end! We also met a Mongolian-American girl there, who had some awesome stories, including sinking through the ice of a frozen river with her 4×4, having to be rescued by a fire truck. We haven’t done anything that crazy yet 🙂 .

We still had some time left, so we went to a large bazaar, called the ‘black market’. You could literally find anything there (including some new crappy Chinese hiking shoes for Tom!). No antique cabinet for Wafa though 🙁 . She wanted one ever since she saw some pretty ones in the lobby of the Ramada:

Dinner was fish and chips, burgers and loads of pizza with Jamie and 2 Canadians. Best pizza of the whole trip (also the only pizza of the whole trip). When we got back at 11PM, we found the manager of the hostel/tour operator and discussed booking a tour of the Gobi Desert with them. By 12PM, we had booked a tour for a week, starting the next morning. Talk about fast service!

Thursday to Wednesday, the 19^th – 25^th of July

After a bit of chaos in the morning, we got underway at 10AM. First we went to the outskirts of UB, to a WWII memorial. Some really nice views on the town. Rocky, our guide, gave some info on living in UB. Not our kind of place: lots of smog and very cold in winter (down to -30°C!).

Afterwards we drove to Terelj National Park, where we got to visit the Turtle Rock (named for obvious reasons) and a nearby Buddhist complex. While there, we found a nice game of spin-the-wheel, which gave us some directions to find transcendence!

Lunch we had by a river. The tour included everything: car with driver and guide, sleeping places, entry fees. But most importantly: breakfast, lunch and dinner! Rocky turned out to be an excellent cook, so for the next week we ate really well (and hardly any Mongolian, to be honest. Lucky us!).

Our final visit of the day was to the giant Genghis Khan statue East of UB. This actually marked the eastern most point of our trip, and it was quite an impressive one: at 40 meters tall, this statue of Genghis is the largest horse riding statue in the world. Nice views from on top of the horse head too:

In the evening, we went to a nearby Kazakh family to spend the night. Dinner was Mongolian BBQ (you basically put heated rocks in with the food), and horse noodles. Really good! Afterwards Tom tried to milk some of the family’s cows, but they didn’t like that so much. We did see a cute little 1 day old calf, though!

(Wafa managed to stay on a horse for 5 minutes!)

The next day we started off early, driving through intense rain again for 100s of kms on unpaved road. Our little Russian UAZ van, Uno, was crazy good at it though. We only got stuck in the mud once, which our driver, Incheh, got us out of quickly. By late afternoon we got to a mountainous park, Ikh Gazriin Chuluu. This had some really nice but alien panoramas. While going for an evening hike, we spotted a couple of ibexes just 20 meters away from us. Bouncy fuckers! At night we cooked food, had some beers and played some Mongolian card games. We were lucky with our companions: the driver was a bit crazy (but funny), and our guide really sweet (and friendly).

(If you look closely, you can actually see an ibex in the middle of the last picture.)

On Saturday Tom woke up way too early (3.30AM), but got to watch the Milky Way again. Also hiked up a nearby hill to watch the sunrise:

While descending the other side of the hill, he stumbled upon the nicest bit of wildlife of the whole trip: a vulture’s nest! (Since then, we’ve determined it should be a Cinereous or Black Vulture, of which there are only 4000-5000 left in the world!) The mother was huge, with a wingspan of over 3 meters! And the baby chick in the nest was just lying there motionless, hoping the stupid tourist would leave it alone.

After breakfast we started driving again. The pattern for the next week started to emerge: each day we drove for 6-7 hours, over some really shitty unpaved ‘roads’. We’d arrive somewhere late in the afternoon, do some sightseeing, have dinner and go to bed. While it was a beautiful trip, it also got boring at times, driving for so long. Today we arrived at the ‘White Stupa’, a rocky formation resembling… a white stupa. After setting up camp in a nearby ger camp (with baby camels!), we went to watch the beautiful sunset:

We talked with Rocky at length about Mongolian dating customs (pretty similar to Belgian ones, but apparently dating non-Mongolians is frowned upon, got to keep the bloodlines pure!).

Sunday saw us driving towards the largest town in the Gobi area, Dalanzadgad. After taking our only shower of the whole trip in a public bath house, we visited the nearby Yoliin Am Canyon. Very nice hike, with lots of pikas to spot! (Inspiration for Pikachu, by the way.)

The canyon is famous for its ice, which can stay around until August (really weird so close to the Gobi desert). We only found one little muddy patch though:

We talked to Rocky some more about Mongolian customs. Burials are still done the Buddhist way: they leave corpses out in the open for the wild animals to chew on (see also the Zoroastrians of Iran). If you were a good person in life, your bones should be picked clean after 3 days. If not, a monk is called in for some vulture-calling mantra’s, to help speed up things. For babies, things are slightly different: they are put in a white box, then put on the back of a horse. The horse rider will drive over the steppe and leave the box where it falls.

The day after we drove from Yoliin Am to the Khongoryn Els sand dunes. This was the real Gobi! We arrived at 2PM but had to rest up first: the road had been the worst so far (literally got thrown around in the back of Uno) and it was probably around 35°C. In the late afternoon, we went for a camel ride:

At around 7PM, we set off towards the sand dunes proper. Coming from the stony steppe, these dunes look like a sheer wall, a tsunami of sand. We would climb the highest ones, at around 120 meters high! It took us 1 hour to climb the bastards (real procession of Echternach, each step followed by sliding half a step back), but it was worth it in the end: the sunset views on top of the dunes were amazing:

When we got back to the ger camp, we tried getting the sand out of our clothes as much as we could (including the half kilo per shoe), but we would still find sand in the shower three days later, back in UB. Sleeping proved to be really difficult: the wind was howling and flapping the ger about. So it turned out to be a very short night.

After four hours of sleep, we took off towards UB again. To give you an idea about how the day went:

6.30AM: Get up to have breakfast. We’re a bit groggy from the lack of sleep, hoping to sleep in the car.

8AM: We set off.

8.30AM: After about half an hour, we smelled some smoke in the car. Due to the build of the car, Incheh had to throw out his car seat to find that the car battery underneath the seat was smoldering. He had been working on the car the previous night (because the crazy road had managed to displace the engine), but had forgotten a tool. This had caused a short circuit on the battery. Whoops!

9AM: The car is now on fire. Literally. It had kept smoldering, turning into real flames as we drove on. With some frantic blowing and patting Incheh can put the fire out, we’re under way again after 10 minutes.

12AM: We arrive at our last major attraction: the Flaming Cliffs of Bayanzag. Known as the dragon cemetery, this is a huge site for dinosaur fossil hunting! Tom’s childhood dream finally came true! Walking around in the torrid heat, we spotted some real nice dinosaur bones:

2PM: Lunch near some saxaul trees. These trees are able to withstand the harsh conditions of the desert and are revered by the Mongolians because of it. Rocky and Wafa are amazing: even with temperatures going near 40°C, they manage to cook up a full meal. Meanwhile, our driver is sleeping under his van, while Tom suffers in the shade of a nearby saxaul tree.

3PM-7PM: we drive on as far as possible on the Dalanzadgad-UB road, before we set up camp for one last time. We spent our last night drinking beers and playing card games again. Turned out the camp spot was not ideal though: again a very short night because of the wind howling around our tent. Tom was quite frankly amazed at how well our little bunnyfucking tent held out: at times it was under a 45° angle, but it made it just fine!

So, while Tom woke up at 3AM again, he also got to watch the Milky Way and the sunrise one more time. Last day of driving to UB. On our way there, Incheh stopped over by a nomadic family keeping horses. He bought some airag, fermented mare’s milk, which also gave us the opportunity to try it. Like in Kyrgyzstan, it tasted pretty sour again, but this time there was no smoky flavor.

By the time we finally got to UB, we were completely beat because of the driving conditions and lack of sleep. So after having a burger in a nearby restaurant, we went to bed early. Sleeping like babies!

Thursday, the 26^th of July

Another practical day in UB: After cleaning Suzy out for a bit, we went to pick up our passports from the Russian embassy. Transit visa approved! So we can at least make it back to Kazakhstan 🙂 .

During the check up at the Suzuki shop a week earlier, they had also noticed one of our rear suspension coils was broken (yet more damage to Suzy 🙁 ). So today we also found some new coils and had them installed. Installation had to happen in a different shop, as they were renovating the Suzuki one by now. The new shop told us we should probably have our rear shock absorbers replaced. Shit just keeps being added :’)

In the end, we’re really happy we did the tour to the Gobi. We got to see some more of Mongolia, while also taking care to not further damage Suzy. The roads in the Gobi would have destroyed her. We will probably have to find a shop to replace the shock absorbers in Russia or Kazakhstan, as they didn’t have the parts in UB.

And in case you’re wondering: the costs of all the repairs so far is really ok. While all the work done so far would probably have cost us several thousand €’s in Belgium, so far we only spent around 750€ here in Asia. That includes a new windshield, new tires, ball joints, wheel bearings, engine mounts, balancing tires, suspension coils… If you go to a Carglass shop in Belgium you pay 500€ for a new windshield alone :’) . And we have to have the work done anyway, if we want to pass the car inspection when selling Suzy back in Belgium.

After another productive day, we went to the National Theater of Mongolia, right near our hostel. Every night, they have a show which highlights all the traditional singing, dancing and music forms of Mongolia. While going over, we ran into Gerrit and Nathalie again (see Uliastai earlier). They joined us for the show and we had dinner together after. Really nice catching up with them! They’d leave for China the day after, so we were really lucky to run into them like that (in a city with 1.5 million people, no less). We wished them a pleasant trip, as they are only getting started.

The show was also really entertaining: not only did we finally get to witness throat singing (look it up, it’s an amazing technique), there was also long singing, folk music, nice dance acts and even a contortionist. Not allowed to take pictures or record video though, so nothing to show 🙁 .

Friday, the 27^th of July

As we’re writing this blog post, we still have 2 days left in Mongolia. It might be while before we can update, so in short here’s our planning for the next days and weeks:

– Today go for shopping and museums (dinosaurs!)

– Tomorrow drive 500km to Northern Mongolia towards Russian border. Visit a traditional bow and arrow factory on the way there.

– Cross over into Russia on the 29^th. We have 7 days to cover 3200 km to the Kazakh border, so we’ll have to see what we can see or do along the way. We pass Lake Baikal, which should be nice.

– 4^th of August: Cross into Kazakhstan again. Get our last Russian transit visa in Astana. Hopefully cover some 2000km quickly to get to Russia again.

– Around 11^th/12^th of August: cross into Russia again, for the last 2000km to Europe. Pass Moscow and Saint Petersburg on the way, so hopefully we have some time to stop there.

– Around 20^th of August: back in Europe! Normally through one of the Baltic countries. We might try to stay for a few days, depending on how we feel at this point.

– Back in Belgium at the end of August! If this planning works out, we’ll have done over 10000km in one month. We also started our trip this fast, so it should be ok. Link if you’re interested to see the planned route on Google Maps.

So see you again soon!