The adventure started already when we approached the border. Stani and Kristin had told us that it took them 5 hours to get across, so we left UU early in the morning – unfortunately we can beat their time, it took us 7 hours to enter Mongolia. The actual border crossing was only 1,5 hours but the hard part was getting into the border-compound. And while waiting to enter the compound we already learned so much about Mongolia, or better to say the Mongolian way of life!
When we arrived at the border crossing, several cars and trucks were there but not really heaps so we thought ‘easy, we’ll be outta here soon’, but how wrong were we!?! There were three lanes: one for trucks, one for cars and one for busses and VIP’s. The last thirty meter or so were divided by concrete barriers. Ten minutes or so after arrival, I happened to stand just a meter away from the beginning of such a barrier, leaving a bit of space between me and the car preceding me and suddenly a different car drove in the tiny space between us once the queue started moving one car length – WTF???? I was outraged and made my annoyance heard, just to meet blank stares and laughter… Holger was calming me down and after spending another 3 hours in exactly that spot and watching proceedings at the border I had understood that queuing is not something people in Mongolia do. Rather, getting somewhere or getting something done is an artful skill involving determination, a keen forward drive and definitely no fright of proximity (and maybe some elbows), I had made a complete fool out of myself when a) I left a tiny bit of space and b) when I complained about the other car jumping in… A well, you travel, you learn :o) Because the trucks made much faster progress than the cars, many cars started to honk mercilessly, however the sternly looking lady at the gate was not to be fooled with, if cars speedily drove up close to the gate once it opened (there was about a five meter wide breach), she sent them back. Waiting is not cherished in Mongolia :o)
You cannot cross the border on foot and it looked as if empty trucks were crossing much swifter than those with loading, so we saw many passengers from trucks, pedestrians and sacks of rice and other goodies being stored away in passenger cars (seat belts are a mere accessories here and from general observation I have come to the conclusion that as long as everybody inside a car can still breath the car is not overloaded). While waiting, Troopy gained quite a bit of attention by the mainly Mongolian crowd. We got several offers to sell him or our metal jerry cans. Most Mongolians we have met are extremely interested (not to say nosy) in anything they don’t know. While waiting the door was open as it was quite warm and one guy, Ratoff, even climbed into the car, so that at some point we were sitting with three people in the cockpit :o)
He went on to thoroughly investigate the car and we exchanged information about each other as much as we could, turns out he is a police man in a nearby city.
Finally some progress was made (we were already starting to worry if we would cross the border at all that day).Once we were in the compound we waited again and the Russian authorities seemed somewhat puzzled that German nationals travel with an Australian registered car and this made for a bit of delay but in the end it was all sorted. They kept all our registration cards and sent us off.
On the Mongolian side we again learned something about Mongolia: Bureaucracy is very intricate and involves many different steps, the meaning of most of which we did not quite grasp but everything involves stamps. While Holger was running around the hall I sat with our luggage (which you had to take out of the car for the border crossing procedures) and made smalltalk with a Mongol we later on named ‘Mr Good afternoon- Oooh, I am hungry’, a guy who had been waiting with us and who could speak those two sentences in English (which was by far exceeding what we managed to speak in Mongol). I got my map of Mongolia out and he highlighted some places we might want to visit, he himself came from a nearby village. Once Holger had filled out heaps of forms, had circulated many a time between three different counters in the big customs hall and we had paid our tax we were free to go. We drove for another two hours, got some Togrogs in Sukhbataar and found a campsite in a field off the main road – We were finally in Mongolia!
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