September 17, 2016
to Pyramid Mountain Camp: eagles and vodka bottles
We were able to get all our chores done yesterday afternoon: Exchanged our left over Chinese Yuan for Mongolian currency, bought a sim card and 5gb of data for our tablet, stocked up on food and filtered lots of water. So this morning we haul our gear downstairs and hang it all on the bikes. We have about 5 days of food and over 20 liters of water with us. The next town we will pass through is Darvi at about 350km. We will be able to divert about 5km to Tsetengel if we need extra food and there should be water on the way up the pass.
The road we plan to take is the new mining road which was paved by the Chinese all the way to a mine about 300 km into Mongolia. We read in other blogs that the direct road from Bulgan is about 10km of loose sand so we choose to stay on the older road further north for another 60km. They parallel each other and get real close at 60km where it should be possible to jump over.
On our way out of town we fill up on gasoline for our stove. The road rounds the airport, and then heads out into the desert. It gradually climbs. There is an unfinished toll station, then what seems to be a veterinary post where the tires and our shoes are disinfected.
We are a bit surprised how nice the road surface is with an almost total lack of traffic. The reason for that becomes clear after about 30km, the pavement abruptly stops replaced with a rough roadbed that is blocked with earthen barriers every kilometer or so. Car traffic has created parallel tracks though the desert; motorcycles have cut tracks over or around the humps to still use the roadbed. We follow their example. For about 14 kilometer it is pretty rough going, one deep river valley has us pushing our bikes up a steep dirt track.
At 40kms there is a town of Uyench that is much larger than we expected. There is water in the river and another veterinary post. And the asphalt starts again! Up another long hill then level for a while. At exactly 58.5 km where maps.me indicated there is a dirt track that connects us to the new mining road about a kilometer to our south. If you are coming from the other side look for the distance marker (DM) 208 / 99. We have lunch in the shade of a bridge barrier, and then start a long downhill with the wind behind us.
Our plan today is to go as far as we can. That is pretty much our plan for the next couple of days. We have no idea how far that would be from day to day, it depends so much on wind direction, road surface and grade. We know there is a 2800 meter high pass somewhere between where we are now, at 1300 meters, and where we are going, but we are unsure where exactly it is. Previously with google maps we created maps of our planned days and we had a good idea where to expect hills. Since we've not had internet access while in china to create the maps, now it is all a surprise, for better or for worse. The road surface is great, but the shoulders are littered with empty vodka bottles. We are back to the Soviet influence.
At just over 100 km from Bulgan, we had enough. The sand is very loose so we don’t bother to push very far into the desert, there have only been a couple of cars all day. Not worth the effort trying to hide or get away from any noise. We camp behind a small bush, fix dinner of mashed potatoes and baked beans in tomato sauce, finished off with a can of tropical fruit from the Philippines.
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Today's ride: 101 km (63 miles)
Total: 22,415 km (13,920 miles)
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