July 17th-18th (Day 5-6): Clinging to luxury

After sending off our last blog post we went to hang out with a couple from Montreal we had met at lunch time in the ger camp's restaurant. They had recently purchased a set of 99 sheep ankle bones and showed us some ankle bone games. We played with them and their Mongolian driver for a bit before one of the camp employees (who spoke English well) corrected all the mistakes we were making. The driver had probably tolerated them ''cheating'' at the games the whole time as he didn't want to overcome the linguistic challenges needed to explain the detailed rules.

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

On day 5, we cycled 85 km to Kharkhorin. About midway, when we had stopped for a break, we saw a couple cycle tourers coming from the other direction. It was a middle aged French couple that greeted us like we were long lost family. Over the last 8 months they have cycled from France to Mongolia and are blogging about it.

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In Kharkhorin we decided to splurge on accommodation by staying in Dreamland: a Japanese themed lodge and ger camp. At first we had a look at a luxury air conditioned ger, but after suffocating on the bug poison we sprayed to calm down the resident flies, we decided to switch to a room in the lodge.

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By western standards Dreamland is a bit run down. Most depressing is the fact that there are virtually no other guests staying here. Due to low volume, the restaurant, listed as the best in town in the Lonely Planet, has reduced its menu to basic Mongolian food. In a twist of irony, we're hoping to find something better in the neighbouring lower priced ger camp's restaurant. Nevertheless, we are enjoying our spoiled days while we can.

We spent day 6 exploring town and replenishing our fat reserves. We found a great restaurant in town for breakfast. We had the largest meal of the trip, and the staff didn't know we were biking. They must have thought we were total pigs as we ate a loaf of bread with butter and jam, two small omelettes, a large plate of fries, three cups of coffee, and five cups of tea. We then returned within four hours for lunch!

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Kharkhorin was the capital of Mongolia for a short time around Chinggis Kaan's rule. After about 40 years the capital moved to Beijing. The main attraction in town is the Erdene Zuu Khiid monastery. Although far from its glory days, it remains Mongolia's most important monastery. We enjoyed visiting it and ran into the spanish cyclists there.

Here's our route for day 5 (view it in google earth):


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July 14th-16th (Day 2-4): Enjoying the pavement (mostly)

Elbows are made for scraping. On our second day of biking Krystil fell off her bike while trying to outrun an excited dog. We were told by our travel doctor not to catch rabies. With every dog that chases us, and they love to chase, we fear it is looking for a little tourist to chew on. Our dog avoidance strategies vary. For this one we decided to outrun it since we were going downhill. This worked well until the patch of sand won against Krystil's ability to ride her bike. The good news is that we have not yet had to fight any dogs.

At a roadside ger, we ran into a spanish couple we had met in Ulaanbaatar. They had actually come on the same train from Beijing as us and had dealt with bicycle-induced customs issues with us. We rode past them in the scorching heat, only to later see them pass us in a truck.

After 117 km of biking on day 2 we set up our tent in a field beside the highway. Later in the evening we had a visit from 15 year old boy who wasn't too talkative, but seemed to enjoy sitting with us. After he left, his older brother (probably around his mid-20s) came by to visit and we had a better time 'chatting' with him. Our lonely planet phrasebook got a workout.

On day three of biking we stopped in at a Mongolian ger restaurant beside the highway for a traditional breakfast: sheep's meat with onions and noodles. This was our first real introduction to Mongolian food, and we are both relieved to find that it was delicious. However, we were not too keen on the fermented mare's milk, and the yak butter tea was mediocre. After passing the town of Rashaant, we turned off on a side road for 12 km to a stay in a ger camp at the ruins of Ovgon Khiid monastery. Since we are tourists, we love tourist ger camps. We love the food, the showers and the spacious gers. In the evening we went for a 2km hike to some other ruins.

Today has mostly been a rest day. We slept in until 7:30 and did some bike maintenance before departing. We followed a different road 12km towards the highway (as it joins the highway further west). The road was very sandy and we ended up walking our bikes most of the way. We should have expected it, since it runs right beside some sand dunes. We came upon a family with their car (2wd with bald tires) stuck in the sand. We were surprised they had made it that far. We did our best to help for a short while until a 4x4 (carrying Dutch tourists) came by and pulled them out. After three hours we were near the highway and stopped in another ger camp for lunch. Then it started raining so we decided to get a ger.

We've added some more photos to this album. The new pictures are geocoded (you can see where each photo was taken on a map on the right hand side). Here's our route for the three days (you can also see it in google earth):


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July 13th (Day 1): A good start

Ten days after leaving Vancouver, we finally started cycling! We woke up early and had a good breakfast in the guesthouse and set off on the streets of Ulaabaatar a little after 6am. Starting this early meant we avoided the traffic. Drivers have been giving us a wide berth and we've gotten countless friendly waves and hellos.

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

We got a bit off track in the suburbs of Ulaanbaatar and decided to cut across a residential (ger) area back to the main road. Unfortunately we hit a muddy patch and our bikes and shoes got soiled with some of the most tenacious mud we've ever seen (sorry, no pics).

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

The rest of the road was on some of the nicest tarmac in existence. Quite the contrast with what the rest of the roads will be like in Mongolia. About 82km west of Ulaanbaatar we turned off the main road towards Hustayn Nuruu (national park). We followed this sandy side road for about 5km to Moltsog Els tourist ger camp.

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Despite getting here at the early hour of 1pm, we both promptly passed out on the comfortable beds. We never did end up going the extra 7km to the actual park. After waking up from our siesta we had dinner in the ger restaurant and then got straight to work entertaining you on this blog and uploading some photos (sorry, Chris made a mistake while geocoding them so they are not geocoded today, when we get a faster internet connection we'll re-upload them with geocoding).

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

All is not heavenly though: now that the sun has set the various bugs have invaded our ger. Hopefully they'll leave us alone when we turn the light off and crawl into bed.

Here's a map of our route today (you can also view it in google earth)

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