Altai, Mongolia

Wow driving in Mongolia is tough.

Anyone who says the southern route is easy must be out of their minds. The "main road "is terrible and takes some interesting routes (if you can find it) - whilst driving through the mountains we managed to hit a rock, bending both wheels on the right side of the car - effectivly giving us two punctures. Luckily we were near Khovd, so we stopped there and got the tires replaced. We moved on toward Altai and then got another puncture - great. We decided then to take it easy and to drive only at 25mph to actually get somewhere rather than get another puncture. Needless to say, 20 minutes at 25mph later another tire was shredded. Shit. With no spares at all we took the scenic route to the nearest town (over a landscape so rocky it looked like the moon) and then along what looked like a footpath over sand dunes.... dodgy. The next day we got a lift back into Khovd to get 2 new tires. 13 hours later, 1 puncture and 6 push starts, we had new tires.

With the new tires, we headed on (slowly) toward Altai, where we are now. After 5 days of car maintenence, sand and no water to clean yourself with a cold shower is absolutely amazing. At the local garage there are plenty of Mongol Ralliers, many of whom have destroyed their cars. In Khovd we actually saw an abandoned Mongol Rally car (the Morris Minor) which the locals had picked up to repair and sell. Our car is still going strong, so if we treat her well we should be in Bayankhongor in 2 days, and in less than 4 days we should be in UB...

Thoughts on Mongolia so far? Lovely, lovely people - can't say I appreciate the landscape though - I'm throughly fed up of sand and rocks.