Mustangs take to the road

“Bag not here, call this number tomorrow”…..and with this comment from the expressionless customs dude at Ulaanbaatar airport, we knew it would be a long mission to start our trip! Somehow and someway, quite impressively really, Air China had managed to get only one out of 4 bags to Mongolia with 2 more due to arrive later that night and the last one unaccounted for.

So, off to the hotel we went, with only a handful of belongings between us with the loose promise of my luggage arriving at 1am that night. Ambitiously, I set the alarm for midnight to head out to the airport and claim my loot. A few pints and a good dose of jet lag won the day however and it wasn’t until morning when we were able to make the trek back out. After some hand gestures, walking around aimlessly and having to wake up several sleeping airport workers, my bags were finally located. No such luck for Tim however. His box was “maybe in Beijing or maybe Sydney and maybe on the next flight but maybe not”….not overly helpful really. As I write this, the box (containing Tim’s mountain bike, guitar and tent) is still in limbo, but after a whole day chasing it up, we had to abandon it and hit the road with the vain hope of it miraculously making it to the Best Western, Kelso hotel by the time we get back to Ulaan Bator.

So finally, after 2 days of messing around with luggage and shopping for some new gear, we did manage to head out of town to Cheke’s moto rentals and get set up. It’s fair to say that Cheke is not a high end motorbike rental dealer – this we came to realize when the taxi driver unloaded us in a dusty street and pointed us towards a yurt. Cheke was nowhere to be seen but a few non English speaking older gents were toying around with a  fleet of bikes so we decided this was our place! As we were trying to load up, Cheke arrived and she has seen our type before! Within half an hour, she had us all set up and ready to roll, albeit on questionable looking Chinese made bikes. “Bikes are ready” she exclaimed. This truly filled us with no confidence whatsoever, but such as life, we were ready to roll.

Now – we’ve both done our fair share of cycle touring and if we were on our bicycles, we would be well sorted and loaded and rolling in no time. However, these bikes have motors and neither Tim nor I have any idea about motorbike touring. Turns out it’s tricky trying to strap unsuitable bags to cheap motorbikes and ensuring everything is in the right place. We’d heard some horror stories about mechanical issues out on the steppe so we’d also loaded up on cheap Chinese tools from some dodgy market in town. Getting all the gear on the bike was proving a challenge. Maybe it didn’t help that I’m petrified of having to eat boiled mutton and therefore have half a pannier full of freeze dried vegetarian meals and treats! But onward we charged and with all the gear very randomly tied to the bike (I am sure we will refine this over the coming month), we were off on the surprisingly smooth and sealed road, West out of the city.

After a few frustrating days in what is a fairly stale, boring and unappealing capital city, we were glad to be away on our real adventures. We have some very loose plans to head up north and then west. I say loose plans, because as we were flying into Ulaanbator, I couldn’t help but notice the road “network” out in the countryside…..pretty much a spiders web of dirt tracks, criss crossing each other all over the place. Suddenly, our low resolution map and a handful of printed google maps weren’t looking too useful! Ah well, we’ve got lots of food at least, so I was sure it will sort itself out.

Warm up ride in the mountains

As if to ensure the adventures were going to come thick and fast, it took us a grand total of 50km to have our first break down. Nothing like a stalled start to a trip.

It was late in the day by this stage and as the sun was slowly dipping, we’d decided to find camp when I saw Tim’s rear wheel wobble suddenly. Boom. Blown tyre. Lucky we stocked up on those cheap Chinese tools though right……”do you know how to fix this?”…..”nah, no idea….” Great! Day 1, 50km in and we were stuck! In our pre trip research we’d read constantly about how wonderfully friendly the Mongolian folk are so I decided to test the theory and rode away from the highway aimed at a dusty yurt camp in the distance. Some fairly rough hand signals and gestures later and a few Mongol elders loaded up in their blue truck and headed to the rescue.

Turns out they run a tourist yurt camp which was pretty handy, because as they helped unload Tim’s bike off the truck, I was introduced to a warm yurt, with power and fireplace. Not a bad place to break down really! By the time we got Tim’s bike back to camp the repairs were put in the too hard basket for the day. The light is unbelievable here with the sun not dropping until well after 10pm, making camping a real treat. We took solace in this but knew quite well that we’d be in for a long day tomorrow.

Old mate to the rescue

Camp in the middle of nowhere

Our little yurt camp

As the bright sun rose on another picturesque day, Tim started recruiting help to get his wheel off and I took off to the ridges in the distance for some running. The terrain all around, for a running nerd, is awesome. Ridges as far as the eye can see, fields of short grass and goat tracks everywhere. It really is a “pick your own adventure” setting for running fun. I returned with the hope that Tim had fixed the relatively minor issue and we’d be on our way….how wrong I was. Old mate Mongolian who was “helping” managed to turn the punctured tube into swiss cheese in a crude attempt to remove it and successfully turned one puncture into 7. Closer inspection of the tyre showed that it was actually a piece of shit, so we decided against putting a 7 patch tube back in it and continuing on, knowing that mechanical assistance was only going to be harder to find as we went. Therefore, we made the horrible decision to head back to Ulaanbatar in old mates truck to stock up on a new tyre and a few spare tubes. Well, Tim did anyway, I stayed at camp and played ukulele and drank coffee all day!!!

So, second day of riding and effectively we had completed 0km…..hmmm! The fun wasn’t over either as Tims adulation of returning with a new tyre and 2 tubes was soon put to bed when our “helper” AGAIN managed to pinch the tube when putting it in and proceeded to blame our “faulty” pump. Hmmm – he was duly sacked and we managed to reassemble the wheel and take off for a solid test ride through the hills. Our patience had expired by now so another night in the yurt beckoned.

Tim and his repair friend

Picking my way down a fun descent

So there you have it – the first 4 days of our adventures had been slow to say the least with lost bags, broken down bikes and very little kms travelled. We have, however, managed to up the ante over the last few days and I happily report that  after a few days in the saddle, including a sweet camp adjacent a very impressive mountain backrop, we are on a rest day in a quaint little town called Tsetserleg in Central Mongolia, a confidence boosting 600 km from our start point. Funnily enough, there is a guest house run by an Aussie here who has a few half decent mountain bikes. Thus, we have happily been spending our rest day on a 55km ride across mountains and through stunning valleys to a hot springs and back. Not a bad way to unwind really.

 

Not much around here..

Pretty sure this pavement will end soon....

Old mate and his horses

Horses in the distance

The riding thus far has been fairly easy, even for us, with most of the road sealed and dusty truckstops every 50km or so serving up boiled mutton dumplings for Tim and oily fries and potatoes on rice for me. However, tomorrow we roll out again, heading west towards a town called Tariat before pointing ourselves north aiming for Lake Kovsgol. Apparently the road stops in 100km, the dirt begins, the food stops dissapear and everything becomes a bit more challenging. It will start to get interesting for our little Chinese Mustang bikes I’d say! Particularly given that mine is burning about half a litre of oil a day…..better get that looked at really…..

 Tims Excerpt...

A travel abroad to any country which isn’t Canada, USA, New Zealand, UK, Ireland or the fair old country we call home (the great ‘Staya’), there’s this thing to contend with called the language barrier. The language barrier comes in all shapes and sizes. On a trip to South East Asia or Western Europe it comes in a small size. On a trip to Mongolia however, well it only comes in Super Size Me.

With the rapidly expanding capital Ulaan Bator embracing everything western, try just hard enough and you may sniff out somebody who can count 1-10. All this changes once you hit the Steppe.

Not only is the language foreign, so is the script where Cyrillic is used. 30+ characters which look similar to Roman ones however the sound of each is nothing similar. Unlike a trip to say Germany where you may be able to decipher the meaning of a sign, in Mongolia you stand no chance. For instance when you see ‘Mapket’ one would think ‘Market’ right? Well it is actually! (but that’s the only readable sign I’ve found to date).

Mongol is a mix of many languages ranging from Turkish in the west all the way to Korean in the east. To my ear sounds more like a mash of Chinese and Russian which makes sense due to it’s geological location. With this comes a language of entire new tones and tongue twisters making pronunciation all but trying. Craig and I didn’t go to university for no reason though. Aspiring young people we were with the knack of  this thing called initiative. We therefore put this do good use in order to ‘de-Mongolise’ the language into something we all could better understand.

It started with ‘Cheke’, the lovely lady who we rented the motos from. It was the very first person we ever dealt with on the emails well prior to our departure. Pronouncing ‘Cheke’ was put in the too hard basket so we just referred to her as ‘Cheeky’. Turns out she was far from it and gave us some very useful advice “when a dog chases after you on the bike it won’t bite, so just kick it”.

The second word we came across (again before we left) was the currency. The Tugruk. The “Tug what?” Well it just became ‘Tinders’. How much for that? Ok here you go, here’s 12,000 Tinders.

Then there’s the fair old destination where I write this. Called Tsetserleg, well it sounds easy enough to pronounce right? Well correct pronunciation is just boring so it became ‘Tits-McGee’ (think Anchorman). In true Australian fashion though that was just too long and time wasting to say in full so it was shortened to Tits. Yep we’re currently in Tits. Unfortunately not literally.