Rygsækrejsen 2015-2016: Bogged down Mongolia

We woke up to a cold Mongolian morning. The weather seems to have set its mind for being cold and wet for a while.

The people who had chosen the gers were happy about it but they also realised that most gers in Mongolia are not water proved. There's an opening in the roof where the chimney is and when it rains that means rain inside the gers. So the planning of sleeping 7 in a ger (more people to save money) didn't really work out. 2 of them had to go the the unheated kitchen ger to sleep since the floor was pretty wet from the rain. We had had a good night's sleep in the tent, no rain inside and managed to take it down before the rain came.

We had breakfast and then left for a drive along one of Mongolia's many muddy roads. Today with extra added water. We slowly progressed with the truck along the shores of the lake for about 4 hours. Or 35 kilometres. Then we got to a small town – say 20 houses, the tarmac road started and we suddenly did a normal 70 kilometres/hour for about 5 minutes. Then we turned of on the next dirt road. This one less muddy though. A few unsuccessful attempts at crossing the stream and we set up for lunch instead.

Then we headed further up the river looking for places to cross, realising that the last few days of rain had made the stream turn into a river. So no luck. Until we found the place where the river had decided to split into three different streams. That made it for us. Until we got stuck at the shore. Sand mats helped us out this time. And one more time.

We did make it some 10 kilometres up the next valley when suddenly the truck decided to make a 90 degree spin because the surface was so slippery. Once again – sand mats and a little luck. And then we ran out of luck.

The tracks split into several directions spreading out over a 40 meter wide area and our driver chose the one most likely to get the truck through. And we were stuck. In a real bog with grass and water. Nothing worked. Sandmats, digging, getting help from a 4x4 car (haha - who needs a truck with 4x4), more digging, jacking the real wheels up, filling the hole with stones, getting the sand mats placed directly under the wheel, having all of us in the truck above the rear wheels… well nothing. The truck only moved in one direction – down.

On the positive side some of us got to do a little hike up the mountain road. About ½ hour each direction baffling the drivers that went by. It is not a road where you usually meet people walking basically because there is nothing between the two small villages – except some 30 kilometres of nothingness.

Dinner was served, a few extra attempts at getting the truck out of the bog on our own – and then we put up tents. On the nice side of today's experiences we have to say that the weather in the afternoon was nice to us. No significant rain, not too cold and a few patches of sunshine to cheer us up. And most of us kept spirits high.

Our Mongolian guide and our Dragoman driver got a lift to get help from the nearest bigger town. Only to return one hour later now knowing that the nearest big town was not 15 kms but 65 kms down a narrow bumpy dirt road. So no help from tow truck tonight.