Reflections

Everyone is heading home … the adventure is over. Compass advertise adventure expeditions and Mongolia certainly delivered.

We had it all – torrential rain, stunning views, a great crew and team, a few too many accidents, great roads and way too many bike problems. Overall fantastic riding.

It is a team effort and unfortunately not all our team made it, so it is a little hard to be too excited about our success. It is all great fun – but it only takes a moment to turn bad.

I didn’t expect to see afternoon tropical storms and downpours like we did and I didn’t expect to see so much smoke from the massive fires in Siberia.

The biggest frustration was the quality and condition of the bikes. I know compass is hamstrung by the local supplier, and I know the crew worked hard to try and get the bikes prepared, but we had way too many problems and significant safety issues.

When we met the bikes Rodger checked the tires. One of the BMW that was to be carrying a pillion had 4psi in the rear tyre – straight from the workshop. It is clear basically nothing was done to prepare the bikes for our 2 week tour. I lost count of how many hours we lost due to bike problems and often delaying us creating more challenges.

While all the days intended to be in camp well before sunset – there is always a risk things don’t go to plan. On our Day 3 we had a number of bikes riding in the dark and in the rain with no headlights.

As I said previously – the only saviour was the ability of the support crew to keep them moving.

Mongolia is stunning; you can’t describe the grandeur of the scenery. The locals are also fantastic, always with smiles and waves. A few times the police wandered over – just to have their photo taken with us. I think riding a motorbike is probably the best way to see the place – you can cover the distances, manage the often-bad roads and take in the vista. We saw tourists both on the Chinese 150cc bikes and on Royal Enfield with side cars – both seem like really hard work to me. While Karen and Lucille had a great time in the UN Nissan with Ellis it must have been pretty bumpy at times. We saw some push-bike riders – I can’t imagine anything worse. It is just too far between anything – and riding on those roads with trucks and animals would not be fun.

But mainly it was about the riding; open free riding, dirt tracks winding forever along valleys, multilane roads – that are just parallel tracks through the grass. I would prefer more dirt and less bitumen, but it is a big country and you must cover the miles sometimes.

Justin was a great leader, calmly managing us through the challenges and guiding us through the landscape. Ellis was always there behind us with the UN Nissan when needed, with lots of snacks and keeping us moving.

The drone (DJI Mavic Air by the way) has been good fun and a great way to try and capture some of the scale of the landscape. Managing and preparing video is hard work but I think the results are worth it. I will do more editing and get more decent quality video up to YouTube soon I hope.

The biggest question now is: what next?

Some videos.

The wifi has been pretty sketchy on the second half of the trip - and we were very rushed on the last nigh night in UB, so I have fallen behind on the videos a bit. We are now sitting in Hong Kong with very good internet so I have uploaded all the videos to YouTube.

This was our first big-valley dirt ride into the first Monestery.

The climb up to the volcano - but I didn’t do a very good job with the drone unfortunately

Day 13 ... my sick day. Lucille has a picture of me out in a field on all fours .. but I would rather remember it for this:

I Think I have posted this before, but the shot of Ric riding off into the distance might be the best drone shot of the tour: so here it is again in HD this time:

The last run home

It was with a bit of sadness we awoke to our last day. Today was scheduled as our longest km day, but all bitumen back to UB. The sky was very grey and threatening, and the smoke was back quite thick. I was feeling better ... dinner from last night stayed down. Phew.

We started the day with a visit to the ancient capital established in the 12th century by Chinggis himself. It was all going fine until the communists came along and in 1930 pretty much levelled the site. All that remains now is the outer wall, a few monasteries and some damaged stone work. Another great outcome from Mr Stalin - thanks.

We headed off on pretty good roads, straight as a die in places as far as the eye could see - which was not very far unfortunately through the smoke and clouds. Even from the highway the scenery remained spectacular. We had one small shower before lunch, and it was a bit cold and quite windy - not so attractive. At least I got to use the grip warmers!

Lunch was supposed to be at a very unattractive road house but the queue was out the door so we had one last picnic outside - we were all hanging out for another tuna salad!!

As we progressed after lunch the traffic slowly increased, then we saw our first billboard, then a few factories, more cars and trucks, double lanes, more traffic, some cows crossing the road, and before long we came over one last saddle to UB, sitting right under a huge storm cloud. Great.

We got into a petrol station just before the worst of the storm hit - and waited it out for about 30 minutes, but the roads were still soaked. Then we hit the worst of the UB traffic, in light rain ... wow. Ric gave a little demonstration of Australian Road rage to a few locals, I managed to upset one bus driver, but generally the traffic was happy for us to flow through, mainly in the bus lane, and make some progress. It took 3 hours for the red support van with our bags to make it to the hotel! My main goal was not to drop the BMW in front of a bus. I could run out of the way quickly but it would have been embarrassing to not bring at least 1 bike back.

We dropped the bikes off at the compound of the bike supplier and he gave us a lift in his bus to the hotel.

I can’t say “we made it” because 2 our our team weren’t there. Eric is home (Oman) now but Geoff is still in Beijing hoping to fly home in a few days; but it was pretty satisfying getting off the bike for the last time knowing what we had been through and covered.. I did reset the odometer on the first day, but since I was on my 4th bike (I got to ride them all in the end) I cant tell you the extract distance - but it is reported as about 2,200km.

We finished the tour with a very posh dinner at the top of the highest building in UB. Everyone scrubbed up and we enjoyed one last review of our adventures ... and discussion of what our next adventure will be.

I might save my summary for one last post ....

Oh dear ... Gastro. Day 13.

Oh dear ... there is nothing much worse than gastro when you a riding across a wilderness....

Just before dinner last night I started to feel a bit unwell. Just as my very-nice-looking Aussie Burger was being served - it hit in full force. All I can say is thank God for Gastro-stop. While I was still vomiting a bit today and haven’t eaten anything - it didn’t stop another amazing day.

After about 20km down the road on bitumen we turned off again and headed out across the plains and valleys. It is sounding boring probably - but blasting along at 80+km/hr across the plains was a hoot. Today is our last day on dirt so we had to make the best of it.

I was on a BMW 800 (Bike #4) which is a big beast (I only dropped it once) but fantastic on tracks like these. 

Then another amazing lunch spot: up on a knoll on the side of a hill looking out across the valley. There were storms brewing all afternoon and a rumble of thunder had us packing and on our way quickly - plus we still had a fair way to go. You guessed it: big flat plains, about 10 different tracks to choose from all heading the same way, a few small river crossings(ok... creeks), lots of photo ops .... 

As we have been heading south and now east the landscape has been opening up, the hills are not as big and the valleys even wider. The smoke was not as bad today either.

And now, our final Ger camp tonight, and a very nice one at that. I wonder if I can eat any dinner?

Tomorrow we just have our final run back into Ulaanbaatar and the chaotic traffic. All bitumen but about 250km so a long. We are nearly there ..... 

The livestock

I don’t think we have seen a single fence in Mongolia. All the animals are free to roam as they wish. This morning there were cows drinking from a pothole in the middle of a main road.

The first day we mainly saw horses, but there have been lots of sheep, goats, cows and yaks, and one family of pigs today. I think it is just for the tourists ... but there have also been some camels, including few herds (?) out in the open. 

In case you were wondering why there were so many horses:

Sometime the sheep like to sleep in the curve of a track so you just have to go around, but you always have to be careful - it seems the grass is greener on the other side of the road and none of them have much road sense. Its ok on the dirt tracks because you can easily go around, but on the main roads you often have to slow down just in case that cow jumps out. It was worse on the KTM because that was louder and seemed to spook them a bit more. Then you have to watch the mirrors as sometimes the locals don't care and keep going at full speed.

The land of the Prius

There must be some government subsidy for hybrid cars because Mongolia is the land of the Prius. Seriously - half the cars here are Prius. At the lights in UB on the first day we saw 7 in a row.

Half of them are right hand drive - when they drive open the right (generally) here. Apparently they are imported from Japan when they approach end-of-life. 

It is amazing what a Prius can do! We have seen them crossing rivers with water up over the bonnet, water skiing through puddles, we have seen them out on tracks in the mud getting through when we were struggling. And all loaded with the whole family, a few kids on Mums knee at the front and the rest with Grandma in the back. Today we finally saw one dead on a track after trying to jump just one too many dips. They look pretty hard to stop.

Safe in UB

Lots of stories and little time. Details to follow but we are safe in UB after one last thunder storm just as we arrived in the chaos of UB.

We are just waiting for our bags to catch up.

Full details to follow soon.