Saturday, August 18, 2012

Day 72-77, From Ulaanbaatar to Saynshand

Day 72, sightseeing

Until noon I wrote my blog and wrote e-mails to 18 farms in China where I possibly can work as volunteer. (I bought an adresslist for 40 USD from wwoof.org). The afternoon I spent together with Ouyns cousin. We went at first to the Naturalhistorical Museum. His profession was to make movies of animals in the Mongolian nature and he had many exciting things to tell! It wasalso interesting to see which animals there were in Mongolia and to read the history of the Mongolian Wildhorse, which had been extincted but reimplanted from zoos.
Then we went to the museum of the last imperior of Mongolia. Actually The pallace was the oldest uilding of UB. Inside we could see fantastic beautiful buddha statues and treasures.
Then he showed me a hill with many steps from which you could look down at UB.
Since it was quite late and almost dark I decided to go there next day by bicycle.

Day 73, sightseeing, 40 km

In the afternoon I went with my bicycle and made a round of about 0 km. First I rode to the airport and the big green hill south of the city. I climbed up and looked at all beautiful flowers growing there. Then I rode to the hill with the steps, climbed up and made some pics of UB.
On the way home I bought groceries for the next day.
In the same building as the supermarket there was the smalest IKEA I ever had seen.
You only amost could buy kitchen equipment there.

Day 74, Leaving Ulaanbaatar, 130 km

Before I left Oyun and her department I checked my mail and noticed that none of the 18 chineese farmers had answered. So I sent my mail again and asked them to answer. Finally I left.
I had to cross the town from west to east, which took a whole hour because of all cars blocking the mainroad. Still I was much faster than all cars and busses!
From bicyclists I had heared that there was no asphalt roads south of UB. That is not true, I rode all day on a good road with almost no traffic.
Amongst others I saw some Camels next to the road.
I should have continued some more kilometers in the evening if I not one of the spokes of my backwheel had broken. I could not replace it because it was impossible without taking off the casette of cogwheels, so I made an temporal mending with some wire.

Day 75, 125 km

Next day I enjoyed a wonderful morning in the Mongolian nature. The sun was and there were no mosquitoes. I thought about the slogan I had read: Mongolia, the land with the blue sky while I was eating my breakfast. When I was riding through the grassland I noticed it smelled very spicy. There were almost no cars (about every 10 minutes I saw one) and the trains passed about every second hour. Unfortunately the engines of the trains run on diesel so the smell of them was stronger than the smell of the herbs around.
I rode 80 km nonstop and at noon I saw several kilometers in front of me three persons on the road. They were so far away that it took me several minutes until I found out that they were moving in the same speed as me, so they must be riding on their bicycles too! But I needed to rest so I decided to stop at a cafe and eat some lunch. I thought it would be good to ride together with someone through the dessert but I hoped to find the group next day.
After the lunch the owner saw an empty waterbottle on my bike and offered to fill it.
As you see the cafe was built with slipers from the railway, which made it smell very strongly, even inside. I wondered if the smell of the impregnators could be healthy for the people inside.
Next town I passed was called Choir. There I found a bankomat in the second bank (the people in the first bank said the neares was in UB or Saynshand, both 225 km away). There even was a Internet center full of youngsters playing some LAN.
But as I asked if I could check my e-mail I was told that it dod not work (if this was true I don't know, maybe they just did not want to be interrupted).
230 km from UB finally the asphalt-road ended
and soon it was devided in 10 or 20 parallell-going earthroads which could go several kilometers apart. Some of them more sandy, some of them with more ripples and some of them with more clay and waterponds. The challenge was to choose the best one.
In the evening I thought about the dangerous woolfes I had heard about so I did not want to sleep in the middle of nowhere. So I found a sleepingplace near a coal mine, not far from the yurt of the security-guards.

Day 76, 110 km

Already t 6 in the morning I heard foot steps close to my tent. One of the guards had discovered me! He was very friendly, spoke some Russian, and invited me to their yurt. He told me that three German bicyclists had visited them the evening before and that they could not have continued so far because they left quite late. He invited me for a soup and let me my his waterbottles. Then I left to find the german group.
After 3 km I found their tents. Actually it was a group of two who the day before had met a single bicyclist called Hans-Georg Mall, who was on his way to Beijing.
He wanted to study Chinese there and had decided to ride ther on his bike. He had ridden almost the same road as I but because he only had two months he had to take the Trans Siberian between Moscow and the Baikal lake. Now he had only ten days until his studies begun in Peking so he had decided to leave the group of two,
who were riding in foldable bikes with smaller wheels. We decided that I should go with Hans-Georg and the other two wanted to hitchhike with a truck.
This day we had several adventures finding the best road. We tried to ride without road to a (what it seemed) good road, but on all places the ground was too soft for my bike. The road which seemed to be good was a dry river bed with very soft sand.
In Irkutsk I had exchanged my tire from 42 to 35 mm (there were no broader in the shop), but Hans-Georg had 47 mm and less luggage, which was remarkable better. Several times I got stuck and had to walk with my bike. Finally we came to a road which was the bottom for the new asphalt road. It was very good to ride upon, but about every 500-1000 meters they had made ditches across it, so we had to get down from the road and up again after the ditch. Sometimes these ditches were filled with water and were so deep that I needed help from H-G, because my bicycle was so heavy.
At lunch we stopped at a cafe were nobody could English or Russian. Finally they brought us a soup which was full of tough and fatty pieces of meat. Most of the were impossible to chew, even for me. Afterwards we were told the price and it was twice as much as we expected. When we came out to the bicycles I discovered that the curious boys had stolen my bicycle computer.
In the afternoon there was a thunderstorm and suddenly there was water everywhere.

Sometimes it made problem even for big cars.
The problem was that the clay got stuck between the wheel and the mud flap. Sometimes it was impossible for me to move the frontwheel, so I had to take it off and remove all clay. Finally I removed the mud flap of the frontwheel.

Day 77, 105 km

This day we had wind from behind and the roads were better. But I had a bad headache. H-G was in a hurry to Beijing but I had not me. So we decided to seperate.
I only rode to Saynshand, were I rested in a hostel in the afternoon.

Actually it was the Idea of H-G to sleep in a hostel but the last he said before we separated was that he maybe wants to continue because there was such a good wind and that he would send an sms if he decided to stay in that town. For me anyway it was best with a resting-afternoon, bacause of my headache. Maybe we can meet in Beijing again, I thought.

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