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 ....