But let’s leave Russia first
At the pre- arranged time of 8.00 am Lenus arrives from his hotel. We will ride together to Ulan Bataar in Mongolia
As we head south the road gets easier. I am amazed at the lack of traffic - this is after all the main border crossing between Russsia and Mongolia so I thought there would be lots of cars and trucks on the road. Not so !
At 1.00 p m - just as the hottest part of the day arrives - we arrive at the border. It is the old story, export the bike, go thru Immigration and passport controls, cross no man’s land to Mongolia, go thru’ Immigration, then import the bike into Mongolia. It all takes nearly four hot and tiresome hours to do all the myriad bits of paper and stamps. If is not helped by the fact there was a technicality with our Mongolian visas so they had to very slowly issue new ones
So now we are in Mongolia and Bactrian camels start to appear. OK then, a Bactrian camel is a two humped camel!
Cattle and sheep and goats and, people on horses, also appear
We find a hotel in a town called Subbator about 50 km form the border. It has been a long hot day
Not so sure about the hotel lights tho
And now having overnighted we are on our way to Ulan Bataar. We stop for a roadside break. It is really nice to note that the roadside toilets are air conditioned! It is also reassuring to see how they seperate the ladies and the gents.
But the landscape is lovely - rolling green hills trees and nice vistas everywhere. It is very attractive countryside and there are nomadic gers dotted thru the landscape
Sheep, goats and people on horseback also appear
We catch up again on the side of the road with our Japanese friend Tsutomu who is riding the postie bike to Europe from Japan. He was on the ferry with us from Japan to Vladivostok. He can only travel about 60 km per hour so he puts in long days. He is so excited to see us he almost bursts out of his skin
So much so that he does a very credible haka as we leave him
We stop at a traditional ger for lunch and have our first Mongolian lunch
Then it is into Ulan Bataar. It is a very long elongated city and we arrive at one end and our accomodation is at the other end. It is a long hot slog thru heavy traffic
And thus we arrive at the Oasis - a Mecca for long distance motorcycle riders. We have our first night in a ger
We are now in relax mode. We will stay here for two days, look around, check the bike over, visit Ghengis, do the washing, get intel on the roads ( or lack of them ) across Mongolia , and just chill out
But we have to visit Ghengis Khan who is immortalised by a gigantic statue about 50 km out of town. And here he is in all his magnificence
To get to some idea of his scale if you look carefully you can just see the people dots in his horses mane
We go up into his horses mane where the dots were to get close and personal
I look out to the right of the statue -
And - wait for this one, I have been working on this one for a while - to the extreme right of Ghengis Khan you can just see where the ACT party (a right wing New Zealand political party) was born! I half expect to see David Seymour kneeling in supplication before the mighty man!
On the way back into town thru’ 20 km of dusty roadworks I think to myself that perhaps there could be a statue of this scale of Diana and I astride our motorbike somewhere near Queenstown. On the Crown Range saddle overlooking the Wakatipu basin could be a commanding and regal position. Or on the outskirts of Arrowtown to help boost their tourist numbers and badly flagging property prices! And of course it would have to be a slightly bigger statue than this one of Ghengis.
And now rested, refreshed we are ready for the demanding bit. Tomorrow it is off across Mongolia to the west. It might be a little time to the next blog
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