After this great time at Khovsgol we went back to Moron for another stop over and then headed West. We knew there were now some long drives ahead of us to get to Bayan-Oelgii, the last Aimag we visited, and we had planned to camp about 3 times before we got to Ulaangom and crash in a hotel there before we make it to Oelgii in another 2-3 days.
On our first stop we camped in very scenic valley surrounded by hills covered by forests and cooked some stew:
The evening was quite brisk and we decided to sleep in the car, preparing for a seemingly cold night:
Imagine our dumbstruck faces when we woke up after what was arguably a cold night to find frost (Eisblumen) on the windows INSIDE the car – boy it was cold and it must have been even much colder during the night, I needed two coffees to get warm :o)
Clearly we had been in Australia far too long because we had ignored the danger that un-insulated taps can be damaged by frost and – bingo! – we had busted our tap, it was dripping now grrrrr! Thank goodness my daddy and I had build in a second, internal one and we did not loose our water. The bottled water and the moist wipes also had frozen… We thought again of Guy with a dog and hoped he had migrated to the wooden hut!!! The frost gave the scenery a nearly eerie atmosphere and despite it being frickin’ cold it was very beautiful to watch. We had driven through marches before and the little water pools were now also frozen… We were quite happy that we had decided to stay at Khovsgol lake instead of going into the higher mountain areas! The next few days we just drove west. This is where we we encountered petrol stations where manually operated pumps are still in use and Holgi jumped in to help pumping the 60 liters we needed to fill Troopy up and which was a bit of an ordeal for the attendant.
Ulaangom then proved to be a big challenge if not to say one big disappointment and we were really a bit on the edge on that day. The day had begun with a kind of typical Mongolian interaction: At dawn somebody passed by on the nearby road on a motorbike, saw the car, stopped and knocked at Troopy’s window while we were sleeping. He ‘just’ wanted to have a look in the car and ask again how many people were traveling with it, WTF!?! By now we were fairly used to being stared at, not only is Melville a rare sight in Mongolia but also we two were both obviously visibly different to the majority of people. Most of the time, Holger got the brunt of the staring because he is over-towering most Mongolians and is also having quite a beard which sets him apart. Because I’m rather short I blended in a bit better and I also might have had better training in being stared at when after chemo when I stopped wearing hats once my hair came back and I looked like GI Jane. Anyways, most of the time this was not an issue but once in a while when we were not in the mood it could get to us and this was one of those days where we were just plainly annoyed by it.
After more really bad roads which brought Holger to the brink of his patience (after a while he suffered at every bump, hole and corrugation Melville had to take) we did not find a place to stay in Ulaangom as we had hoped. The only hotel we found (two of the three listed by LP were closed) looked more like a jail and did not have hot water. For us the main thing was having a hot shower when we stopped at hotels in Mongolia hence this one (apart from being really hideous and not very clean) was ruled out. If there was no shower there was no point in staying - we think we are better of camping, for sure you have the nicer scenery outside towns. Finding an internet café also proved difficult, actually all of the West was bit void of public internet-access and I’ve come to a real loathing of internet cafés particularly because repeatedly we were turned away: Although there were apparently computers available we were not allowed to use them for unknown reasons. The best facilities were mostly found in post offices as all other internet places were swamped with Mongolian youngsters splattering blood playing Counter Strike or strategic role play. The day turned a bit brighter when we had a nice lunch to celebrate our 8th week on the road and purchased some really good Russian cookies (they make excellent cookies) at a store :o) After leaving Ulaangom we headed South to camp outside the town.
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