Spaces wide enough to swing 1000 cats

​The great fist of Chingis Khaan 

Wide green rolling plains stretch almost to infinity all around. White dots of distant yurts break the green. Brown lines of the multi-threaded tracks disappear up valleys ten kilometres wide and thirty long. Tight herds of Mongolian ponies, sheep or cattle scatter from our path. Eastern Mongolia, huge space.

In Choibalsan in the Far East I am joined by Bridget and Cath. Both from South Africa. Although they are impatient to hit the road I need a rest day. My room is next door to a large common room where a large group of Mongolian locals are celebrating a festival. Vodka flows and song loud and strong filters under my door.  Late at night the hotel manager knocks on my door. The group has realised the impact on my sleep and had a whip around to buy me a room upstairs. The party briefly crowds into my room as I thank them for their consideration and gratefully slip away upstairs.

Next morning as we depart the hotel the group surrounds us with good wishes. The head man of the team is heading on a trip to China. I thank him for the quiet room and wish him well. As we navigate out of town, the hotel hostess catches up with us in her car. She has gone to a market to buy us drinks and snacks to send us on our way. 

First day is a gentle 65 kilometres to the small village of Sergelen. The gentle ride turns to a 6 hour ride into head wind. A tough start for the ladies. As we approach the village a car pulls alongside with drinks and chocolate pies (an Easter Egg type treat with chocolate coated marshmallows). The day  brightens with the sugar kick.

We are guided to the village “convenience store” by three teenage girls. We shelter in a small covered seating area consuming drinks and snacks and pondering our camping options. The store keeper offers the rear of her yard to put up our tents but insists I lock my bike in her store shed. Overhead thunder clouds rattle in, rain begins to splatter.  I have just finished rearranging the store shed to fit my bike when the couple who had met us on the way in offers us accomodation and food at their house. With rain now getting serious we accept the offer. 

The evening unfolds with a wonderful gentle hostess who turns out to be the local meteorologist. Intelligent, interested and articulate in a Google-translate assisted conversation. She whips up food then we are invited to sleep on their bedroom floor. Bridget and I look at each other but accept the offer graciously. I try to remember the last time I invited three total strangers to sleep on my bedroom floor. A truely shining example of humanity.

The Mongolian cultural sense of generosity really set the tone for our journey. 

Riding is tough. Tracks surfaces vary from smooth hard packed earth, to deep sand and rocky corrugations. Head winds and climbing rob momentum. Ten or eleven kilometres per hour set the pace for seven hour days. Navigation is challenging. Despite months of mapping a detailed GPS course, the tracks are not singular. Up to five or six variations of the track meander in the vague direction, often with offshoots varying off to distant yurts. Constant checking “how far have we varied off course” followed by a cross-country transverse to the correct route.

Despite having state of the art Garmin GPS devices - they constantly prove fragile and frustrating. While Cath’s and mine will show a variation to the right, Bridget’s will show the opposite. Thankful that I have loaded alternative Gaia GPS software onto Bridget’s phone as the arbiter. The bold claims of battery life on mine of 68 hours proves a total lie, backup battery packs and solar charging prove vital.

The scenery is stunning with constant company of herds of wild ponies. Friendly help often pulls alongside with a stockman on his motor cycle, helping with directions or inviting us to camp by his yurt for a wash in the river, and to share breakfast with his mother next morning. Lard and butter bread with a beef broth. Another encounter saved us from the constant risk of water shortage, a stockman with two children on his motor cycle disappeared to return with filled water containers from “tisha” - over there.

After 3 days in the steppes we saw our first trees, and a days ride through forest. The stockman we later encountered informed us he hunted bears and wolves in that forest. No bear encounters this trip.  The higher country included some vicious climbs, walking only with heavily loaded bikes.  We had determined that we could really only carry water for one overnight camp or two at an absolute stretch.  With my planned route heading into more mountainous country with no known water supply for possibly 3 nights we decided the risk equation dictated we should head for the nearest town.

Navigation off route, proved even more challenging. The town Bridget had identified did not exist on any of my electronic maps, as chief navigator the problem had me a little nervous at our overnight camp. Fortunately Gaia came to the rescue when I was able to zoom into a town called Omnodelger and found it had an alternate name which matched Bridget’s paper map.

A couple of days Highway riding on sealed road brought us into the Chingis Khaan statue complex and end of the Mongolian Miles for a cure Challenge ride that was raising funds for the Mongolian Cancer Council (pity there were not a few more adventurous takers).

Unfortunately Bridget will leave us in Ulaanbaatar. It has been great to ride with an old cycling friend, to have her calm practicality alongside and her tough mental edge to keep pushing along despite limited cycling preparation before the trip. Cath brings a gentle humanity to our passing interactions and her lightweight rig allows her to keep the pace well. A few vital holes in her rig will be quickly filled in Ulaanbaatar. Thank you ladies for your company.

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Morning tea stop at a well on the way to Sergelen (well water for the desperate only)

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Arrival into Sergelen

Our Sergelen hosts

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Directions from a passing stockman

Constant herds of Mongolian ponies

Wild flowers on the Steppes

Rock camp out of Omnodelgen

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A lump in the throat to see. this magnificent statue after years of planning

The girls arrive at the Chingis Khaan complex

2000km completed