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| From Olgii to Khovd |
August 23rd (Day 43, 33km): Before heading out onto the road in the morning, we enjoyed our final Olgii meal at the Bluewolf Cafe. Luxurious 'American breakfasts' are rare in Western Mongolia so we took our time and ate as much as we could. The road out of Olgii was in good shape (it's the main road connecting Olgii and Khovd) but gains considerable elevation.
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
August 24th (Day 44, 50km): We continued on the main (Olgii-Khovd) road to the town of Tolbo.
When the four of us entered town we got a lot of attention from the local kids. We were unsure if this extra attention was because we are now a bigger group, or if the kids in this town are friendlier than other towns. Probably a combination of both. After searching around a bit, Krystil got a group of kids to show us where the town well was. The kids were excited to help fill up our water containers. Chris started to pump only to be moved out of the way by several kids who insisted he was doing it wrong. A bit later Krystil returned into the pumphouse to take a photo of the water pumping party but found out that one of the smallest kids had been left to do all the work on his own while everybody else was outside to watch the tourists. We left the main road at Tolbo and continued a bit towards Deluun before setting up camp.
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
August 25th (Day 45, 65km): A big day of biking! The roads have been quite good allowing for easy progress. We made it over another pass, and camped shortly before the next pass.
August 26th (Day 46, 39km): After biking over the third pass we headed down into the town of Deluun. As we ate lunch inside a crowd of kids gathered around our bikes. Just like in Tolbo they followed us around town as we did our shopping. By the time we left we had quite the fan club. We camped next to a stream a small distance from town; quite a treat after spending so many nights camping without water nearby!
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
August 27th (Day 47, 30km): We made it into a beautiful canyon that follows the Buyant gol (river). Just as we were approaching Krystil's rack was in need of urgent repair. As we began to fix it, two motorcyclists stopped to visit. Most Mongolians are very interested in (and some are quite skilled at) fixing vehicles. They insisted we were doing it wrong, but after we completed the repair they gave us their reserved approval.
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
August 28th (Day 48, 23km): The main branch of the road we were following left the valley we were in at the bend in the river shortly past our previous night's campsite and headed towards the town of Duut. We stayed along the banks of the river on what is marked as a seasonal road on our map. However the route turned out to be just a horse trail for about 15km (we had to push and carry our bikes for most of this). We crossed the river several times before seeing the first ger of the day where the trail turned into a faint road. We were invited into the ger and served some tea, vodka, distilled fermented mare's milk, solid fermented mare's milk, bread sticks, and butter. We continued for a few more kilometres to where the road became better defined and camped.
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
August 29th (Day 49, 63km): We expected the road to follow the river all the way to Khovd, but shortly after our camp the main branch left the valley. We followed this road over a couple big passes before doing a big descent into Khovd. We initially tried to stay at a tourist ger camp a few kilometres before Khovd but seeing as it was mostly closed (they had no food to cook us) we found a good hotel to stay at it town.
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
August 30th (Day 50, 13km): We took most of the day as a rest day. We enjoyed a relaxing breakfast before touring the market and stores. Krystil got a miniature watermelon. We found a vegetarian restaurant that had Illy coffee and enjoyed a small cup each (the first non-instant coffee we have had since Ulaanbaatar). Then, since the hotels were all booked up we biked out to a different tourist ger camp just outside town. The camp was basic (no showers) but it was in a beautiful location. We ordered way too much food for dinner and we could not finish it (except, let the record show, for Chris who finished his portion). We felt bad about returning the uneaten food to the hostess.
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
August 31st (Day 51, 53km): We left most of our luggage in the gers and set off on a day trip on our bikes. We got some views of a large lake (Har Us nuur) and picked up some beer in the nearby town of Buyant. We returned to the ger camp and managed to eat all that we ordered for dinner.
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
September 1st (Day 52, 13km): We lazied around the ger camp for the first half of the day. After we packed up we headed back into town (Khovd). We stopped for a beer with some Mongol Rally drivers staying at a ger camp that had been specially set up to attract Mongol Rally participants. We managed to get rooms in the same hotel we stayed at on August 29th. We went to a nice looking pub for dinner where an Australian music anthropology PhD student helped us order some food (she was doing research in Mongolia and spoke Mongolian).
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
September 2nd (Day 53, 4km): We did the short bicycle ride to the airport. We arrived at the airport about 3 hours before the flight but the LED displays indicated the flight was actually leaving in only 1 hour. This turned out to be false but we still felt rushed at the check-in counter. They happily took our bikes (for the right price of course) without any disassembly. In fact, we suspect they preferred it that way as the ground crew got to ride them to the plane. We wimped out and had our guest house arrange a van to transport us from the Ulaanbaatar airport (the traffic is scary). We put our bikes back into boxes in the guesthouse and went out to eat fancy Ulaanbaatar food.
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| From Olgii to Khovd |
September 3rd-5th (Beijing): We flew to Beijing on the 3rd where we said goodbye to Anna and Tyler after an enjoyable meal at the airport. They stayed in a transit hotel at the airport and flew out the next day while we spent two nights in the city. The next day we failed to get to the Great Wall and instead went to check out the Forbidden City. In comparison to cycling across Mongolia this turned out to be quite dull and we soon left to wander the city in search of Starbucks before returning to our air-conditioned hotel room. The air quality was as bad as the first time we were in Beijing. At times it was raining and when water got into our eyes it burned. We flew out the next day and after a long layover in San Francisco we made it back to Vancouver!
We may put another post up with some of the practical details of our trip if there's any interest. We could discuss what equipment worked and what failed, how to get internet access everywhere in Mongolia for a few cents a day, etc. Let us know in the comments section if this is worth putting together and if you have any interesting questions about the trip.
Photos from this last section of our trip are in the Olgii to Khovd album.
The map of our bike rides (August 22nd to September 2nd) is here (google earth version):
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