Sorry I Left Out Moron Again

xx hours broken down and stuck in the Gobi Desert was not on our itinerary… and yet our dilapidated mini-van felt that it should be.

Actually our van – I named it "Turquoise Disaster" – had quite a few opinions virtually travel that were reverse to our own. Its propensity to fill the cabin with petrol fumes. Its willingness to open its ain windows, allowing sand and dust to engulf us. Its determination to have the worst suspension in history, which made us feel as if nosotros were riding bumper cars inside a giant washing machine.

Our trip across Mongolia was anarchistic. We were not taking an organised tour the whole way, like 90% of travellers practise. We were going entirely overland, not flying. Most chiefly, it was a 1 way ticket.

We left the boondocks of Moron (pronounced "moorun") on the morning of the first twenty-four hours. We made it at least a few hours out of town earlier the troubles started…

Our drivers spoke no English. And then when the Turquoise Disaster broke down for the third time, in a far more serious way than its previous attempts at failure, we had piffling understanding of what had happened – aside from the massive crunch that occurred immediately before grinding to a halt.

The van had already proven itself unreliable. Prior to its latest incarnation as a metal corpse in the middle of the Gobi Desert, nosotros'd already had a number of "maintenance" stops.

For instance, our gearbox was shot. The drive team had engineered it into permanent 3rd gear. This meant quite a few run-ups when we approached hills and getting out to push when we needed to initially become the Turquoise Disaster moving. Information technology wasn't articulate if we should be getting some sort of discount for the boosted manual labour… We didn't.

Previous stops had felt like par for the course, no reason for business organization. This was Mongolia afterward all. Traversing the country off-road in a Chinese minivan is like trying to become to the moon using a paddle gunkhole – difficult.

This breakdown was different. It was credible, fifty-fifty to someone with as little knowledge of mechanics as myself, that the radiator had emptied its fluid contents all over the sand. As a paying client, I felt dismayed that it had chosen to empty without any prior instruction from me. Unfortunately, like any employee working way too much unpaid overtime, I recollect it had just had enough and resigned.

A long await in the desert was to come…

It was 4pm. Let the Mongolian experts practice their work and we'll be moving once more in no fourth dimension, we thought. We noticed that they had no drinking water and only a fleck of dry out staff of life left, they apparently weren't concerned that this lack of provisions would exist a trouble. A dry out and dusty death in the desert was probably not on the cards.

It's also obvious at this juncture that we didn't dice, well, at to the lowest degree I didn't. This may somewhat ruin the suspense of the story, sad. It's also worth pointing out that Mongolia does not have the RAC, AA or any other form of breakup recovery service that we'd been familiar with in countries with real roads.
It was customary for our drive team, every time we broke downward, which was often, to get out the "Human being box". This is not some homo-erotic ritual, well, not exactly. It is in fact their massive box of $.25: Nuts, bolts, wires, random scraps of metal.

Information technology was essential for them to spread these all out on the floor, sift through them purposefully and then return them to the box. Perchance it was some sort of mental therapy, a concrete method for thinking through the trouble, a problem which was rarely solved with the contents of the homo box.
A couple of hours passed with many human box sortings and various jacking ups and lowerings of the Turquoise Disaster. It seemed this time the problem was serious.

Pointing and gesturing they explained to me that the radiator and its intake were no longer in working order. This was piece of cake to believe given the general country of the mechanics in front of me. Honestly, they could have said the entire van was chip and I'd have believed them. Spit and sawdust may metaphorically be used to fix things. Their actual, physical apply is non particularly effective and they had been overused in property this piece of junk together…

Dis-heartened we contemplated getting our stuff and hitching a ride out of there. Then, the unmistakable sound of sticky tape. Yes, as if spit, sawdust and a human being box of metal bits were non already insufficient for car repair, they'd moved on to sticky tape. I decided if information technology was time to Macgyver the van, I wanted to be involved.
Like the cavalry I valiantly arrived bearing duct tape – surely more effective than the viscous record. They sealed upwards the Radiator intake and by about 8pm they were starting up the engine.

Had all my concerns been in vain? Could a van really be fixed using the Macgyver method? No. It couldn't. We fabricated it almost 10 minutes earlier we had to pull over again.

The calorie-free was fading fast. The drive team had resigned themselves to giving up until tomorrow. With no convenience store in sight how would they survive the dark? We became both cavalry and benefactors. Not content with some free duct tape, we were also guilted into contributing biscuits, jam, bread and water to the cause.

The Gobi: Desolate

I'one thousand from England, a country where the nearest town, or even pub, is rarely more than 5 minutes abroad. So I was surprised to see a group of 3 Mongolians being less prepared for the possibility of starvation and de-hydration than I was, on a trip across one of the harshest landscapes in the globe.
Fed with biscuits and jam, the option of working through the night was out. It was time for usa to enjoy some serious snoring from our local chums equally the five of u.s. bedded downward for the dark within the Turquoise Disaster.

Something nosotros came to learn about Mongolians is that they have the uncanny ability to sleep on demand. They jumped into the van at 9.30pm and insisted nosotros slumber instantly. We were bemused. nine.30pm is long before our bedtime. We set upward some bedding anyway and before even climbing inside my sleeping pocketbook all 3 of them were snoring. This phenomenon has since been repeated, information technology'due south not a comedy routine, information technology really happens.

Given past experience of these guys, and the fact we went to bed at 9.30pm, I expected the drive squad to be upward at the crack of dawn getting busy with the engine. They weren't. In fact their very coincidental attitude to being stranded was condign quite a business organisation – like a gazelle who gives upwards the 2d the first lion tooth pierces flesh. What was their program? Did they have whatever more options?

They finally arose at 10am. The caput driver proceeded to use most a whole bottle of precious water to wash his hands and take a shave. Not the actions of a desperate man, I thought, but maybe of a man who has null left to lose. When they started working on the engine over again it became clear why we had not fabricated information technology very far afterwards the showtime round of repairs. The radiator was not the only trouble.

The big metal thing that sits under the engine containing the life giving oil had a hole the size of a beige in it. Back out came the human being box of metal bits.
Finally Mongolian ingenuity shined through. The road nosotros were stuck on was busy, for the Gobi Desert. Maybe one vehicle every 30 minutes. The bulldoze team hailed downwardly every passer by to acquire supplies, ofttimes relying on me, as distributor, to front end the coin – another supply they had failed to bring.

Inside an hr we had quite a drove: Radiator fluid, gum, tape, water. Then a convoy of 3 massive trucks arrived and nosotros stocked up on engine oil. Using the amazing choice of metallic from the man box, they bolted up the massive whole and coated the patch with "steel gel". They refitted the mess of parts, and a few hours later – 20 hours total stranded – we were on the move. This time it would work, nosotros thought.

The residual of the day passed uneventfully. Nosotros left the desert, got some food, passed a massive lake, a gleaming mirror of calm water. The guys went for a swim. Information technology had turned into the sort of trans-Mongolian trip we'd been looking frontward to: Epic scenery, open spaces. Merely this story my friends, is far from over.

By 7pm nosotros were crossing a mountain pass. The weather quickly turned, as it does in Mongolia – even during the summer! Freezing rain and winds.

Nosotros were only most 2 hours from our destination: Khovd. This is where the head driver'due south family unit lives and he was clearly excited to go home. Reckless driving ensued. Mongolians call information technology "Chaein" plain, every bit they comically informed the states whilst blaming each other for the various breakdowns. Inevitably we hit a massive crash-land. The dream was over.

Ballsy neglect – again! The guys sift through the "Human-Box" behind us.

The patch they'd used to plug the oil tank had been ripped out and black aureate was spewing forth all over the footing. Here we go again. Back up on the jack and about an hour of working in the pelting later, they decided they had stock-still it, over again.

We limped down the mount using the only working gear, 3rd, in a van mainly leap past gaffa tape and man box metal pieces. Somehow as the sun ready on the third day, we'd made information technology to Khovd – a soulless grit basin of a dead end town.

Unsurprisingly, the morning brought the revelation that the van was non really up to another day of travel. No shit Sherlock. Information technology wasn't actually in a state to travel from day one.

This heap of junk needed to retire…

Our options were to wait in Khovd until the following day, or our driver would pay for a "Taxi" for us to leave that afternoon. It turned out the word "taxi" is not quite the same in Mongolia as in other countries. Unknowingly nosotros assented to this plan.

Item of concern number one was that when the 5 seater jeep arrived at that place were already 5 people, including driver, in it. Over filling vehicles is common in Asia, two of the occupants were young teenagers then wouldn't take up also much room, we figured, maybe some people would get out along the style… This was an idiotic thought process on our part. Of course people wouldn't become out forth the way… More than people would go in.

Onto vehicle number ii – The Russian Jeep!

By the fourth dimension nosotros left Khovd our 5 seater jeep independent x persons – including a meaning woman, an ageing Shaman and a 1 twelvemonth old baby (And then, 9 and a one-half people plus a fetus) including of course, 2 "much larger than Asian people" westerners. Luggage was moved from the trunk to the roof then that the two teenagers could sit down in it. The onetime Shaman was moved from the rider seat to the back seat to requite way for the preggers chick and her current one year old. he was not happy about this. I guy was sabbatum over the gearbox, and the rest of us were squashed on the back seat with the Shaman.

Could it get worse? Of class! The five-6 hour journey turned into virtually 8 hours with possibly the nearly careful driver in Mongolia painstakingly taking his fourth dimension.

Nosotros finally arrived in Olgii well after night.

I honey adventure travel but sometimes I wonder "why non fly"? In full this journey cost us 200,000MNT (about $150US) per person and took iv days. More than the locals would pay only still a decent cost for Westerners. Flying would have price a little more and taken a day.

Just this was the existent Mongolia. Enjoyable is the incorrect word, 18-carat and graphic symbol building is the best way to look dorsum at these events.
I may non have loved the stress or being thrown effectually, squashed and stranded merely this is how Mongolians travel.

Now I accept a much closer understanding of what life is really like for the locals.

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This was part three of our trans-Mongolian trip. Observe out what happens adjacent or how nosotros got this far in Function ane (Zamiin-Uud to Ulaanbaatar), Part 2 (Ulaanbaatar to Moron) or Part four (Olgii to The Bulgan Border and Red china)

If you'll be travelling to Mongolia you should also cheque out our ix tips for surviving Mongolia article/video

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What is the worst journey you've ever had? leave us a comment beneath.

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Source: https://foodfuntravel.com/dust-storms-petrol-fumes-and-bumper-cars-crossing-mongolia-the-hard-way/