Mongolia oooooh yeah!

Yep, we're in Olgii, in Wester Mongolia at the moment, and it's amazing! But to start the story from Barnaul, we bumped into a hippy en roiute to the border and he invited us to a hippy festival, so not wanting to appear ungracious we went along and after walking 10km up a mountain to camp above the tree line had a fantastic time with amazing views, unfortunatelt camaer batteries went dead. The Floristic show was mad flowers everywhere and somewthing along the lines of guinea pigs too! Next day we crossed into Mongolia at which point the tarmac ended but the track was good until the first village when it continued in a direction not quite suitable for our journey, so we pulled into a village and a local said follow me and we did at speeds faster than is quite polite crashing through puddles just trying to keep our guide in sight. We soaked a local policeman in doing so and he stopped our guide, we thought for a rerprimand ... but no ... he wanted in on the ride too! So we continued onwards until the tracks degraded to battlefield status and continued on our own passing over a mountain with little if anything to guide us bar marmots and lemmings, until from nowhere a motorway standard road appeared from nowhere and took us on to Olgii where we are now. So far one puncture and one grounding out in Mongolia, car is ok bar dodgy starter motor, may replace with spare or clean it up, probably full of dust from Kazakh deserts. Now in Olgii taking it easy as route to Khovd is flooded at the mo, so paragliding today instead. Khovd tomorrow with luck. Rocked out to Rammstein with locals yesterday ... apparently they like Rammstein ... it was the only guitar based music it seems they had.

Ricky B. & One Man Band Dan