Korea, Russia, Stans To East Europe (page 38)

Mongolia – UB To Mandalgovi

With everyone safely back in UB people then had new directions from the Plan D or so that we were up to.

I wanted to head south still and see the Gobi Desert sands, Lobke also wanted to see them. Our group then went from 6 to 2 which makes life much easier, both Lobke and I are on 250’s with excellent fuel range and 2 well set up bikes.

We excited UB via a small road that follows the river so it was nice, a bit of traffic then we were away and heading south to the town we were meant to be at 2 days prior.

Remnants of the very heavy rain still looking back at us all the way along the road and a solid reminder that we dodged a bullet turning back when we did.

A paved road pretty much all the way we camped half way of the 600 km, there was 1 hill so we camped behind it, we had visitors during the night, thousand of them actually, a herd of goats.

Lobkes tent was right up against the rock and I was 5 metres or so out, the goats were running along the rock kicking loose bits off onto Lobkes tent so it was a game of chasing for a bit to scare them off, Camels also came into the equation as did a curious local.

Snakes, yeap they are here and the ideal time not to find one is when you are doing No2s…. voice of experience.

Getting down to the desert end we got to a water pump station and filled up the bottles and packs, a local came out and he could talk a little English, he has a KHH Russian bike with over 100000 km on the clock, he was proud of this and his dad bought it out and started it, was a coolas machine, we chatted for about 15 – 20 minutes which worked perfectly in our favour as a massive thunderstorm engulfed the mountain we were about to enter.

The national park is where we were heading and there was an entry fee, turned out to be no more than horse rides so not what we wanted, on the way out we thought we would take a shortcut and Murphy came for ride with Lobke.

Lobke lost it in the soft off camber dirt and down she when…nearly upside down actually, was a mission to get back up but we rotated the bike on the ground and got it pointing downhill and I managed to then lower it down to a flat point allowing Lobke to do a damage assessment.

Next in line was the gorge we had tried to take the shortcut too, it was very cool and yes Lobkes bike decided to have another rest.

A coupla skitey pics then time to set camp, we got setup, feed and watered then had a massive thunderstorm again including hail and all.

The thunderstorm came with a presence enough to make for an exciting light and sound display and cool cloud formations 

Morning broke crystal clear and warm allowing us to get on down to the Gobi, all the creeks had been flowing with mud from the previous nights dowsing which made for some interesting riding.