As we were eating dinner last night we could see a thunderstorm building up along the hills to the south of camp but thankfully all we got of it was some strong winds for half an hour.
Thunderstorm passing by.
It also seems that I chose my tent site well last night, as other campers, and even some of those in the gers reported a party keeping them awake for most of the night. On the other hand I slept very well!
Mongolian weather forecasts seem to be even less reliable than anywhere else. Overnight last night wasn’t supposed to go below 12 C, but at the time I woke up it was 6, and by the time I was riding (just after dawn) it was down to 4.
Today we had slightly further to cover than yesterday, and it was hillier too!
Stage 16 rider notes and elevation profile.
The first climb actually went pretty well all the way through to the 50ish km top – other than a head wind from 25 – 35km as I made my way through a relatively narrow valley.
From the top of the hill down to lunch was what should have been a pretty sweet descent, however a decent headwind took most of the fun out of that!
One thing I’m really enjoying about the riding is the ability to eat chocolate bars! At 60km I was felling a little peckish so chomped my way through a Mars bar. If I was at home that would have been 15% of my RDA for calories – today, it was less than 10% of what I’d burnt to that point – and I still had more than half the distance to cover for today 🙂
After lunch had two more good climbs, as well as several lesser ones, and again the downhills were somewhat thwarted by headwinds, but I made pretty good time into camp.
Tonight I have a neighbour under my tree – fellow kiwi Michael has joined me in the shade – let’s hope there aren’t any flash-floods or we may find ourselves a little damp!
Night number two camping under a tree.
As often happens in camp this afternoon we’ve had a local rider – in this case on his horse. I do however suspect that he may well be under the influence of something based on his somewhat unique behaviour!
Local rider passing through camp
Tomorrow’s going to be a nice short day, with only 82km and some 800m of climbing between here and Moron and our next rest day. For me that should end up being a day and a half, since I would expect to be there by about 1100 – though Andreas did mention that we may not be able to checkin till later in the afternoon which would be a bit of a shame.
Weather really happens in Mongolia…! As with the last few evenings, one minute it’s completely calm, the next it blows, and tonight the thunderstorm has gone right over the top of us, dumping an impressive amount of rain in a very short period of time.
Here comes the rain…!
It’s still rolling on overhead, but the rain has eased off, at least for now. On the plus side, the temperature has dropped 10 C in the last 15 min from 28 C to 18 C which should make going to sleep a whole lot easier.
My tent seems to be coping fine, other than the thin material at the bottom of the inner doors which I guess isn’t expected to get wet as it’s about as waterproof as tissue paper!
Let’s hope it blows itself out by morning as the idea of getting up, packing up, and riding in this is pretty unappealing!
Riding data
| Total distance: | 136.72 km | Total Time: | 06:01:10 |
| Max elevation: | 1371 m | Min elevation: | 902 m |
| Total climbing: | 1300 m | Total descent: | -1061 m |
| Average speed: | 22.71 km/h | Maximum speed: | 63.72 km/h |
