Last night’s dinner was somewhat comical when it came time to get the bill as we tried to split shares in a 263,000. The pile of notes at the end was huge!
Receipt and a big stack of cash!
A chilly start this morning with -1 as we set off after rider’s meeting and another great hotel breakfast – Mongolian hotels have really got breakfast sorted 🙂
Today was only a relatively short day all on good tarmac:
Stage 12 rider notes
Getting out of Ulaanbaatar was straight forward – due mostly to the early hour the roads were very quiet. Lunch at 70km arrived pretty quickly despite a couple of stops for photos along the way, and I was back on the road after ‘lunch’ by 0940…!
Our campsite smells amazing this afternoon, about half the ground cover is wild sage, so every time anyone moves the leaves are crushed and a delicious aroma is released – apparently it’s even going in dinner!
With the short day on good roads I was in camp by 1200, so went for a wander around and about to see what was happening – the answer – not very much at all 😉
One thing that intrigues me are the power poles round here – they seem to be concrete at the bottom, with then a timber pole wired to the top.
Random power pole arrangement.
Given the scarcity of timber, and the prevalence of gravel, I don’t get why they don’t make the whole ting from concrete!
The solar panels got their first outing this afternoon.
My campsite for the night with solar panels charging my Garmin in super-quick time.
Although we’d been camping last week we were only away from power for two nights so the battery I have for charging other things was more than adequate. With being out for five nights of camping on this run it wasn’t going to last the distance. I think they can be considered a success. My Garmin went from 45% to fully charged in under an hour!
Rider’s meeting, dinner, and a little light conversation but despite the relatively short ride today by 2000 people are drifting off to their tents to get ready for tomorrow and get some sleep.
If you’re a French speaker (reader) then you may be interested in Bruno’s blog of our journey.
Riding data
| Total distance: | 111.13 km | Total Time: | 04:57:15 |
| Max elevation: | 1469 m | Min elevation: | 1086 m |
| Total climbing: | 653 m | Total descent: | -822 m |
| Average speed: | 22.43 km/h | Maximum speed: | 59.76 km/h |
Love the tractor work and the number 8. LOVE IT. Thanks for sharing.
This is what the no. 8 ends up looking like:
Ha…awesome!
Nice clouds!
Clouds are a real feature here, and they come in all shapes, sizes and colours…!