Day 24 – Byangkhongor, Mongolia to Ulanbataar, Mongolia

It was a beautifully satisfying feeling to see the city lights of Ulanbataar as we crested this small hill tonight.  I think we are just now starting to realize the magnitude of the journey we just made.  We ended up travelling 7,400 miles across two continents and 16 countries through multiple mountain ranges, the Gobi Desert, Siberian plains and a bunch of places in between.  We had one minor breakdown and burned through 8 flat tires.  It’s been a wild journey, but I’m extremely happy that I’ll be with my family again soon.

We had a couple of hours of sleep in the Trackers this morning before Ken and I got up and hit the Byangkhongor tire shop.  These young kids running the place were able to patch up two of the flats and sell us one tire that was slightly small, but would do the trick if we needed it.  With three spares, we thought we could make it to Ulanbataar.  So, off we went.

I drove Centrum Silver for much of the day.  She’s hurting.  Her radio’s been out for about 5 days, her dash lights are out, we had to wire her grill and her radiator fan on since we shook out all the screws, and she’s developed an exhaust leak somewhere so she sounds like a go-cart.  But really, both Trackers have been awesome.  We’ve been relatively comfortable in them and they’ve performed really well, never getting stuck or failing to start or anything terribly huge.  (You should all feel free to laugh out loud at any time I try to talk about something mechanical in any way).

We hit pavement at some point in the afternoon around a city called Arvaikheer and were certain our rough roads were done for.  We had cruised probably a hundred and fifty miles on sweet, sweet asphalt when all of a sudden, while I’m pleasantly writing in my journal with my head down, Geoff says, “What the hell?”

I look up just in time to see us dropping off the paved road about a foot down onto a pothole and washboard riddled dirt road.  Boom!  Our rear end flew into the air and just like that, we were back to the Mongolian roads we knew so well.  I was pissed actually.  Not because the road was bad, but because I couldn’t understand the logic of the situation.  We had just travelled on 150 miles of excellent road, were 80 miles from the crown-jewel capital city of the entire country, and all of a sudden you’re going to stop paving it?  I mean, pave in one continuous line, right?  It was nuts.  And what was more nuts was that we would travel along the dirt road for a while, come to about a three mile section of pavement and then that section would end and we’d be back on dirt again.  One continuous line, that’s all I want.

Mongolia has apparently had more rain this season than they have in a long time and it was certainly shown as we cruised around this section of unimprovement.  The puddles, small ponds and mounds of mud were getting people stuck all over the place.  Even in four-wheel drive, the Trackers nearly got stuck a couple of times.  We pulled out a guy in a passenger car but soon stopped that, realizing that if we pulled anyone else out they were just going to get stuck 100 yards up the road.  We finally picked up a paved road that took us the rest of the way, about 40 miles, into our final destination — the Chingiss Kahn Hotel, Ulanbataar, Mongolia.

Because it was late at night everything was closed, so we celebrated with some room service — some fish and chips, which we thought would make a nice bookend with the fish and chips we so enjoyed in Dover on the first actual day of the Rally.  We were quickly reminded that Mongolia is landlocked as the fish and chips were amongst the worst meals we had the entire trip.  No matter, spirits were high and we were all excited to get some rest, spend the day in the city, and then get home.