Mongolian Mayhem

Had an email from her last night, she's in Ulaanbaatar where she met up with Simon and Lisa and is very tired.:clap
 
Made it to Mongolia

Yes, it's true, I have made it here and I have even managed to catch Lisa and Simon - fantatsic to see them after seven years.
lots of :beerjug: and chatting, catching up on all the gossip, admiring their shiny bikes and generally hanging out.

the Aussie Drillers (not sure what they drill for) have got Thelma in their clutches and so are helping me out with the Russian and Chinese regulators that have both blown up -and did I mention that I have also got a Korean car battery at the moment - the broken reg blew the battery (or is it the battery that blew the reg) so I crossed Siberia with this Korean one stuffed into the battery compartment.

I can't say enough good things about NBS motors in Novosibirsk:clap:clap, supposed to be the biggest bike shop in Siberia (we found them by accident) very helpful and friendly - who helped us with the electrics and sourced the non-standard parts and even provided a bike party to go to last Saturday night complete with banya (Russian sauna) and burly bearded bikers (the Tomsk bike club were in town) brandishing bunches of birch leaves and chanting something in Russian whilst "massaging" me with the birch.

all above board I hasten to add, I was in my best M&S vest and knickers- not sure what they were wearing (or not as the case may be) as I wasn't sure about opening my eyes as it might have been getting just a bit too hedonistic:nenau

and not a drop of vodka had passed my lips as I was still unable to touch alcohol after the regrettable incident where I had a fight :bash with a taxi driver in kyrgyrstan (well, he was trying to abduct me and the blokes I was with at the time)
 
Oy miss coates

For the record Tiff is now drinking again...specifically vodka and coke. Great to see you Tiff at the Oasis.

Where are you now. 4th sept and we ae still in Dalanzaadgad in the Gobi, Lisa's got food poisening as so our one night stop-over has turned into 4 so far. managed get her some med's yesterday so hope fully she's on the mend. We're hoping your on your way down here.

If you still in UB take it eady coming down, irritating sodding corrugations north of Model Govi and the sand increases after down to DZ. Where it gets thicker just ride wide away from the track and make your own.

We're in a small hotel (cause Lisa's ill) at one end of town, come into the centre, easy to find two tar roads 500 metres long with a narrow patch of scrub in the middleand head left. there's a ger camp right opposite with food. It's clean and descent and will set you back 8,000tugrik a night per person.

Hope to see you soon.
Simon T
 
Tiff and Ian so sorry to hear your news

Hey guys,
shit, Lisa and I are sorry to read your news.

We'd hoped to see you down here, but please know if there's anything Lisa or I can do, just drop us an email. We're thinking of you both.

Ian, what shitty luck, sorry things have gone so pear shaped. Take of that shoulder, and of each other.

I also hit a small patch of mud coming south to the Gobi and it had me off in the blink of an eye and I have no idea why, i was going slow and straight. Make sure you milk the injury for a bit of sympathy, Tiff's a great tea maker.

Let us knwo how you get on with the insurance comapny. We've got our share of experience dealing with them, so if we can help let us know.

How's Thelma, any damage? Repairable?

Take care of each other, thinking of you both.
Simon & Lisa
 
Lost my pillion

as some of you will have read on my website, I had a fall and lost my pillion rider Ian - having provided a soft landing (ie me) for him, he still managed to badly injure his shoulder and has now been flown home to have it operated on.:comfort

sympathy?? well it was limited initially as he knows I rode a whole day off-road with the GS club when I broke my wrist at Bakerman's Hog Raost a few years ago. But 12 hours after the accident when I saw his left shoulder was pointing in two different directions he got some sympathy and plenty of cups of tea.

Having sent Ian home, I am now in the process of retrieving Thelma from a shed in Ondorkhaan and getting her fixed- she is rideable as the hospital porter proved but can't make the long journey to UB.

thanks for the good wishes Simon and Lisa - not sure if I will catch up with you now before you leave Mongolia.
 
UB nows their a town, spent 2 years living in UB and travelling around Mongolia.... must have changed a lot since I was their 8 year ago.
 
From one who has returned

Hey Tiffany, I am the Aussie guy who travelled with Tim et al in Mongolia. I missed you in Bishkek. A note to say that I arrived in the UK last week with Mr Mule. Was going to take the same route as you originally and hit Murmansk in mid Aug but the Russian visa geeks soon put and end to that. I managed 22,500 mls in 5 months circum-navigating Eurasia. Your GS looks identical to one I had in Aus. It was a converted GS to a PD bumble-bee. My R100R was stone reliable for the entire trip. Had my first flatty whilst riding with Tim in Wales this week.
Anyhow keep going with the good news. You have the best bike in the business! Will follow your story. My blog is www.offexploring.com/ozdog
 
In the Gobi

At a one horse town (though it does have an Internet cafe) called Dalanzadgad staying in a ger (yurt).

I got Thelma back from the shed in Eastern Mongolia and inspected her with the mechanic, though she looked a bit odd, the damage wasn't too bad and within 24 hours they had her back to almost normal - though still with a funny shaped front tyre, but I can live with that.

Ian is at home awaiting his operation for artificial ligamnets to be pinned in his shoulder (ouch:comfort).

the road from UB to here was OK, I was a bit cautious at first (first journey since the fall) but then with the realisation that if I continued at that sort of pace it would take me five days to get to the Gobi I picked up speed a bit. Which was just as well as the sand started then - as Timolgra had warned me, there is quite a lot of sandy patches in the Gobi!
As I'm on my own, I am trying not to take too many risks, but also aware that I need the speed to get that gliding feel across the sand and I have managed it so far.
Possibly due to this increased speed on rough tracks, the pannier racks on both sides have snapped big time :confused:- probably due to damage from the accident two weeks ago and which was not obvious, so I ended up with a Heath Robinson-type arrangement at one point with both panniers piled on the seat behind me!
the photos will surface eventually.
luckily I had left the topbox in UB so I had a fair bit of room to arrange stuff and made good use of that African standby - strips of inner tubes to tie things down.

I am now debating which direction to go, over a cold beer - except the town has had no power for five days and so there is beer but it isn't chilled.
 
Good to hear you're in Dalanzadgad.:clap

I'd originally thought to see the ice canyon and big dunes but a couple of the others weren't keen on getting into too much sand....oh well, next time:)

That's the great advantage you do have, make your own choices:thumb

We went NNW from there.
 
Good luck young lady..

Hey, how cold is it down there at the moment??? The snaps from the internet weather service seem to indicate its pretty damn chilly in the morning!
 
It's baking in the Gobi

cole- it's true it IS hot here- and not too chilly in the morning though I have to confess for some reason Dalanzadgad seems a bit warmer than the outlying areas.

Tim - I am going to the ice canyon and all that, however as there are no other bike riders around, I am going with some French people in their jeep which feels a bit like cheating - (Cole- you didn't get your arse down here quick enough) though I've not got much choice as even I don't go that far into the Gobi on my own and errr, no GPS either!:D

The town mayor keeps trying to chat me up- though I suspect it's Thelma he's more interested in -and no, he is not about 60:rob, he is quite dashing looking and speaks excellent English.:thumb

doubtless someone will be able to find some obscure picture of him on google somewhere...
 
And another thing...

I need to change the catch on my BMW pannier - the one that attaches it to the bike. the roads here have been very rough as you can imagine.

Yes, I have the part, but I and my trusty team of Mongolian helpers are unable to work out how to remove the old one and put the new one on.
Is it just a case of brute force with those black and silver bits (are they called rivets?)

any explanation will need to be in fairly simple language - remember I am the woman who left England on her first trip without any idea of how to use the tyre pressure gauge, and couldn't work it out without getting help. Though I like to think I am a bit more tech-minded these days.
 
Lost and out of Fuel in the Gobi

I am 24 hours later getting back to UB than I expected as...I got lost in the Gobi, not a huge drama (OK it is half a million square miles of nothing), but I realised I had gone too far east - I had not been concentrating on the track itself as I was having fun and challenging myself with riding a 280Kg bike on sand.
Then when I looked up I thought "this doesn't look right", but kept going just thinking I was being paranoid as I'd had a couple of false "I'm lost" scares on the way down.
Finally when I realised there really were no kilometre posts - usually an irregular marker but an indicator that it IS the right route, I then headed for the nearest goatherders to ask - well, they appeared to be beating their animals so I didn't want to hang around for long. And anyway, as is usual in the Gobi, there is a limited concept of roads and routes as it is all open countryside so you are never "lost" and the only information is a finger pointing in which ever compass direction you need to go- regardless of any tracks or otherwise on the ground.

So I took a deep breath left the track I was on and headed cross country. I stopped the next locals I saw - a couple of blokes on a motorbike who also pointed vaguely and told me I had 120 kms to go, and in case you're thinking I have magically become fluent in Mongolian, they wrote doen for me how far to go - I gave them the opening gambit of "km" and also the name of the town I was attempting to find, as yes true to form, I can't even seem to pronounce the towns correctly with that guttural, saliva in the throat rasp that they use,the town was called Mandalgovi (google images of it if you want - anything that is not a dusty, windswept looking place is the wrong Mandalgovi!).


I rode north knowing that at some point I would see the power cables that run alongside the road and eventually I did find some, but there was no parallel track and as I hunted around for one, my fuel ran out and I was onto reserve- about 30 miles worth left in the bottom of the tank now - oh dear.


I went to a couple of gers to ask for the route but they were locked up. I finally walked up to the top of a hill with my trusty monocular in hand and managed to spot what looked like several rooftops glittering in the sunshine, I took a rough bearing on them (Charlie Coates style) and returned to Thelma. I don't know what it was I saw but I didn't manage to find it, however to cut a long story short I stumbled across quite a main looking track and suddenly around a corner it was Hallelujah as power poles appeared alonside it and further on it had kilometre markers- I had managed to find the right track.

I spotted a lone hordeman herding his cows and asked him about petrol (benzine) - but despite smiling nicely the answer was ugui (no in Mongolian), 500 metres further on and I completely ran out of fuel. Evening was fast approaching so I put up my tent and waited for someone to pass- nothing came. I wasn't too worried as I always carry a few days food and water with me and also the horseman's ger wasn't too far away if I did need something (as long as it wasn't petrol).

In the end it was 18 hours until a vehicle appeared - a slow, lumbering bus.

I ran out and flagged it down- it was already very over-crowded but the driver let me squeeze on - everyone moved along a bit for me and I was given the second step to sit on- sharing with a plump, middle-aged Mongolian woman who kept falling asleep on my shoulder - luckily I only had about 30 miles of this until we reached town.

At the petrol station the woman doing the pumps grasped my situation quite quickly - she found a container and then pointed me in the direction of the next bus to depart - there was a veritable multitude of buses revving up -not sure which route they were all taking but it certainly was not the main road past my tent.

I got on to find there was plenty of space - I even had a whole seat to myself, and there was a bit of a party atmosphere on board - a communal bottle of airag (fermented mares' milk) was doing the rounds - it seemed rude to refuse so I had a few swigs of it.

When we reached Thelma - standing on her own in the desert, the whole bus disembarked to have a look and comment on this strange foreigner and her mini ger.

Fuelled up once more, off I headed- determined not to lose the track again. Just as a cold north wind started to blow.
I froze coming over the mountain range out of the Gobi- with banks of snow reminiscent of the high mountain passes in Tajikistan.

I have limped back into Ulaanbaatar and will be here for a few days.
 
Well done Tiff, that was a great read and I was chuckling to myself as I read it because it's you, and I knew you'd be alright:clap
 
Excellent stuff Tiff....I wish I had your outlook on life's little hiccups, I get nervous if the fuel light comes on even if I'm on the M25.
 
Socialising in UB

The rotor has gone on the alternator- this had been recently repaired but has now gone again and so currently I am waiting for DHL's finest to deliver a replacement rotor to me as quickly as they can.

I need to get out of here as winter is fast approaching in Siberia where I have got several thousand miles to cover to reach Vladivostock.:D
Yes plans have now changed a bit, the original idea had been to go to Mongolia and then home again, but now that I'm here, I think it would be a shame not to try and reach the Pacific Ocean.:thumb2

In the meantime I am having quite a sociable time:beerjug:, various people are around to hang out with and Cole has arrived in town.
He is my room mate and it turns out he is as messy as me:rolleyes:
He has been regaling me with stories about the snow in Siberia, and also displying some very cool dance moves in the clubs.:steptoe
 


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