Up, breakfast and into the vans more-or-less on time – the plan had been to be away at 0600, but it wa more like 0620 before our convey pulled out of camp
We got ourselves a convoy 😉
Remarkably in the vans you don’t feel the corrugations at all which initially seemed somewhat unjust, but once it became apparent we were taking the ‘off road’ route and were therefore going to be some hours on it more of a relief…!
We stopped for a pee, during which time the luggage truck caught up with us, and obviously informed our driver that we were on the wrong road, as we did a u-turn as soon as we set off. Eventually we caught up with the other three vehicles which were ahead of us. Wes topped briefly, but the when we went to leave the clutch in the van had ceased to work, and the driver either couldn’t get the van started in gear, or couldn’t get into gear if he started the van out of gear.
In the end we took the ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ approach, with Ivan, Peter and Rhys helping two other Mongolian drivers to push the van as the driver turned over the starter – we then drove round in a big figure eight and slowed down as far as possible while the three of them jumped in the back before we roared off up the road!
At the border we caught up with the others shortly before 1100 and so began what turned into an epic wait session. Every half hour or so they would open the gate at the border and allow another four or five vehicles in.
The waiting did have a silver lining in one respect – it gave the driver time to perform a complete service on his clutch (at one point he had both the master and the slave cylinders off at the same time!) so that within two or three ‘waves’ of vehicles going in things were working perfectly again!
Roadside van servicing
Shortly before 1400 we were the third vehicle in the queue (and the first of our fleet) when our driver mimed to me ‘it’s lunch time, the border’s closed for an hour’, at which point he promptly got out of the van and headed off to one of the ‘cafes’ in the village with the rest of the drivers.
Just before 1500 the drivers returned, and the gap in front of our van was made slightly wider – just wide enough that another van could nose in, and then half a dozen of the drivers slid the rear of the van into the gap!
Insert Thing A to Thing B (in this case a van into a queue)
Eventually we got into the border compound and into the queue of people in the building for immigration, at which point the usual confusion of where are you from, and where are you going began – and all of this to actually leave Mongolia!
Finally we were through and headed to the Russian crossing – a brief passport check at the actual border (there’s a 30km wide no-mans land) and then on to the Russian entry point.
This time things were much quicker and better organised, though they did want to put all of our bags through a scanner, and then having done so look at anything metal which we had in our bags. Luckily one of the border officials doing this spoke really good English, so was able to make the process go much more smoothly as Christina, our Russian ‘fixer’ wasn’t able to get into the ‘compound’ and was waiting for us ‘on the other side’.
Eventually we were in Russia! Having originally expected to be at camp by 1400 we had just made it over the border at 1730.
Another stop to wait for the bike/luggage truck to get through, then for groceries for dinner (and cash from the ATM, and beer :-)).
We finally made it in to camp at 1930 after a very long day to be greeted by approx. 60 million hungry mosquitos ready for dinner!
Vans and trucks unloaded, tents up, bikes reassembled, and Miles managed to cook us a really tasty pasta dish in under an hour which given that lunch had been four tasty (but small) dumplings on the Mongolian side of the border, and a banana on the Russian one was extremely welcome!
The crew are busy trying to work out where everything goes in the new vans, so the route for tomorrow will be up in the morning but given that we’ve come some 25km since the town should mean a reasonably short day.
Riding data
No riding today 🙁
