Kevin and Karen, Kanadians kurrently in Korea

Well that didn't take too long. Kevin and Karen have opted to join me for the trip in June so no more offers please.

Updates of preparation will go up here before the off and watch this space for images from the trip in a few weeks time (if we make it back alive).

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Mongolia - Dlanzadgad, Naadam, Gobi, Altai. Come along for the ride…

I’ve got one or two seats free during July when I’m driving myself on a photo-tour for 10 days. This is not a commercial trip – I’m looking for someone or two people as travel companions, not as paying tourists.

I’m planning to leave UB by landcruiser on the 9th or 10th July and get to Dalanzadgad for Naadam on the 11th and 12th. I went here 2 years ago and it’s a great place to see Naadam as you can get right up to the action. After Dalanzadgad I’m looking for good places to take photographs (countryside, country-life, wild-life) and as long as it’s somewhere photogenic the route is open to suggestions, but at the moment the plan is to head up to Altai (passing Bayanzag, Khongoryn Els, Yolyn Am, Ikh Bogd and some of the lakes) before returning to UB sometime around the 20th. I work in Mongolia and have driven some of this route a few times in the last year or two so know what to expect.

I’ll be in and out of UB until a day or so before the trip but would like to meet anyone or any two people who are seriously interested in joining me for this trip. I’m thinking of people who are fairly active, fit and healthy so they can stand up to the bumps on the road, nightly wilderness camping and camp food. If you only have 2 weeks in Mongolia then this isn’t for you, but if you’re able to take other trips later, or already have done, then this could be something a bit different. If you came to Mongolia specifically to take photos then we’d be in a similar frame of mind.

If you are interested then drop me an e-mail on trip2005jul@tom-sant.com telling me who you are, what you have done/want to do in Mongolia and what you do and have done in the real world. Let me know any background that may contribute to the trip (specialists in Mongolian history, flora and fauna particularly welcome!). Finally ask any questions you have about the trip and suggest a route after Dalanzadgad if you have one in-mind. I’ll reply to all the relevant e-mails as soon as possible and can meet any likely candidates later next week in UB.

The Upside:

• You get to be driven around Mongolia for almost nothing (we’ll just split the fuel and food costs, fuel will be around 300 to 400 USD total so you pay half if one person or 2/3 if 2 people).
• The vehicle is well maintained and has just done a 2350km Gobi trip as a shake-down with no problems.
• The driver (me) has 10 years of off-road driving experience, the last 3 years spent in Mongolia.
• We’ll be exploring places at a more leisurely pace than the normal tourist jeep trips.
• Photographic advice is free and I’ll probably bring along a laptop for photo downloads and reviews.
• An ipod with 5000 tunes on-board playable through the radio.
• You can jump out anytime though I’d prefer company for the whole trip if we are getting on ok.

The Downside:

• I’m not using a local translator/guide so any interaction with passing nomads will be by sign-language.
• I’m not into staying in local gers and intend to camp each night somewhere photogenic and in the middle of nowhere, or 5-10km away from the big towns.
• This is currently a one vehicle journey. If it does break down it could be a real adventure getting back to UB (I will have a sat-phone, spare water, first-aid etc just in case). VERY interested in hearing from anyone else who would like to tag along in a second vehicle)
• I get the over-riding say in the route and timing (but I’m getting mellower these days).
• You will need your own tent, sleeping mat and sleeping bag.
• An ipod with 5000 tunes on-board playable through the radio.
• I can leave you in the centre of Dalanzadgad, Altai or Bayankhongor if we are not getting on ok.

Pictures#2 for the 2350km story below

Pictures#1 for the 2350km story below

2350km UB-Bayankhongor-Dalanzadgad-Mandalgovi-UB

Briefly back in UB after a couple of weeks of not showering in the Gobi. I drove out to Bayankhongor to start with, taking about 11 hrs. The first couple of hours from UB the asphalt has so many pot-holes you can’t do much more than 60km/hr, then you get on a couple of hundred km of good black-top until Arvaykheer (410km from UB) where you can roll along at 100km/hr quite nicely. After Arvaykheer the asphalt goes bad again and soon you’re on a mix of field tracks and unsurfaced road-bed, back to 60km/hr if you are lucky. Considering it was the start of June it was amusing to be in a mini blizzard between Arvaykheer and Bayankhongor where the road goes up to around 2000m.

A grey-crane or two, many birds of prey, lots of locals herding animals and a total of five foreign cyclists (cold and struggling in a strong headwind) were passed en-route.

I then spent most my time doing fieldwork somewhere in Bayankhongor province (could tell you but then I’d have to kill you). The cold weather was replaced by warm to hot stuff within a few days. The heat of an unrelenting sun was tamed by persistent winds but at least the wind kept the mosquitos away most of the time.

After work was over I did a mega-drive of around 680km taking 14hrs to cross some of the Gobi and move on to our company’s base in Omnogov province near a local town called Manlai. A good journey as the tracks in the Gobi are some of the smoother ones in Mongolia – the only black-top during the whole ride was in Dalanzadgad town where I stopped of to pick-up some snacks from the biggest shop in the Gobi, a branch of Nomin that opened up last year. If you want a TV, carpet or electronic organ in the south of Mongolia then this shop is the place to come. They even had Irn-bru there last year but I was sadly disappointed not to find any this time.

After a few days around Manlai I carried on back up to UB. The night before a huge dust-storm had blown in for a few hours. It had a sharp 500m high front of muddy cloud and came in at around 50km/hr. The road from Manlai going north goes over a series of hills and wide shallow valleys and the going was slow for the fires 150km because the storm had left a lot of standing water behind it. As soon as water hits gobi the ground can go treacherously soft and finding a way to thread between the water-holes was quite fun. On the edge of each wet area was a parked up truck with a driver sleeping off the wait for the ground to harden up again.

A few hundred km of dirt later and a power-nap later I reached Mandalgovi, a province centre in Dundgov. It’s a depressing place to drive into from the south as the track goes next to the town’s waste dump. Getting rid of the waste just involves trucking it out into a flat area and dumping it. There are no dozers to push the dumps together, no pit to push waste into and nothing to stop shit blowing all over the local countryside. Against a backdrop of a abandoned hulk of a coal-powered factory it was not the most picturesque sight in the world. I’d flown into Mandalgovi several times before and the thing that always struck me from the air on a sunny day was the several square km of sparkling broken glass reflecting the sunlight from this area of waste.

Someone a year or two ago made the effort of laying a road-bed from Mangalgovi to where the asphalt starts near UB. Unfortunately they never got around to surfacing it and most drivers are again resorting to the field tracks running parallel on either side of the main road due to the number of deep pot-holes and long sections of ‘wash-board’. This was probably the worst section of the whole trip and slowed the day right down to give an average of only 40km/hr for this 475km. I was glad to see the tourist ger-camp (Ondor Dov?) marking the southern end of the asphalt from UB come into sight and let me know the drive was almost over.