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.
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Still cold and grey |
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Muddy roads |
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Driving on the muddy dirt road |
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All the rain created lakes and streams we had to cross |
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Stuck - first time that day - we have local spectators |
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More local spectators |
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Okay which way do we go |
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Stuck in the mud - our guide Anja is out digging |
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Sandmats and shovels are out |
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Okay we're more stuck than we thought |
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Everybody joins in to push |
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A car tries to tow us |
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Still stuck - lots of Mongolians have stopped to help |
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Maybe we should get the yak to help |
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A lot of advice and help from the Mongolians |
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We're apparently not getting out of here now. Let's cook dinner |
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