On July 25, we got up on the road not far from the village and headed to Sevrey. Some time before we've seen an UAZ going this direction, so it was impossible to lose the way.
The desert was different from one around Khermen Tsav. A little bit more civilized. There were wells with drinking-bowls from time to time.
And much more dunes here. Really beautiful...
We reached Sevrey quite soon and looked for a shop. It's very small there, but we could buy everything we needed. We also found our fellow UAZ in front of the shop with those Belgian tourists: their drivers were making some repairs. There were a bit more tourists in fact, there was an Austrian guy (just joined them in Ulan Bator) who spoke English pretty well, so we talked about his trip and about ours. He was just backpacking and hiking and planned to go to Tyva after Mongolia. At the moment, they, just like us, were heading to Khongoryn Else sands. What was funny was that the guy was from Jenbach, a small railway station where I have been in year 2000. Those days, no one at the station spoke English, so it took me some time to recall what is "ticket" in German to go to Mayrhofen (and "ticket" in German is just "ticket" now :)).
We strayed a bit in the dunes after Sevrey. It was picturesque as always.
We've been said that there are lots of comfortable and cheap campings around the sands. There are really lots of them. We found one that looked very nice and entered it. Lots of yurts, a large building at the entrance, pretty nice toilets and showers inside - everything looked very comfortable. And nobody around. Pity we didn't take a shower before looking for people :) We had to beep to call for the hosts. They didn't speak any languages other than Mongolian, so they displayed the price on a calculator, and it was totally unacceptable. Marina typed a figure that was much more appropriate for us, but the people deliberately turned their backs. So, we deliberately got to the cars and left this empty but not making concessions camping. We approached a "next door" one that looked much more modest; however, they were happy to host us.
The camping was all booked, but the hosts left their own yurt for us. Therefore, unlike all other tourists, we were sleeping on the rags in our sleeping bags, not on the beds. And we also ordered khorkhog for dinner, and all the services together with khorkhog was 2 times cheaper than in the camping we tried first. Moreover, there was a Mongolian girl who guided a group of European tourists, and she spoke very good English, so she helped us to agree everything with the hosts.
When everything was set, Mikha donned white clothes and we went to the highest dune from which he was going to snowboard down.
the dune was really high: if you look narrowly then can see a man up there (this is Sergey) and realize the hight. And Mikha is in the middle of the dune in this pic.
On the left, there is a way up which all tourists followed, but Mikha and Sergey chose another one. It took them long. Me, Marina and Irina were too lazy to go up the dune in hot weather, so we stayed under it. I tried to switch on the transfer gear (lo and behold, it worked) and drove in the sands a bit, after which we were filming and taking pics of Mikha. Later on, Sergey said that there are great views from the top, so I recommend you to go there once you are in Khongoryn Els and feel strong enough for such a hike.
When Mikha got down, some tourists approached us saying that it was cool and that they were filming and that they need our e-mail addresses to share the video when they're back home. And a local has also approached and wanted to sell us some tickets — probably some entrance tickets to the national park. We decided that it was too expensive, so we purchased just a couple of them. Then we headed back to our camping ready for khorhog. And we found out that the transfer gear stopped working and we were driving at low power. So we had to drive very slowly and think what to do with it. Then I occasionally stopped at a light rise, and the transfer gear worked and the low power switched off. At this moment I recalled that I could make the transfer gear work in Khermen-Tsav in the same way: I ran a bit up the hill and stopped, and it made it work. However it was not the end. There was the smell of spice that we already smelled at the mountain pass before. After that, I always recognize this smell: it's the smell of boiling antifreeze. I immediately recalled the same smell when we travelled to Baikal a year before, and I also thought it was a smell of a spice. So, we added all water we had in the car to the expansion tank and crawled to the camping trying to avoid overheat.
We took a shower in the camping. It was a very thin stream of cool water, but anyway nice after several days in the desert. After the shower, we were sitting in front of our yurt waiting for the khorhog, looking at the herds coming home (sheep are butting in a very funny manner) and at the sunset.
Then the khorhog arrived. Stewed goat meat mixed with hot stones, and vegetables with potatoes in the broth in a separate bowl. Yummy.
In the morning of July 26 we tried to solve the heating problem. More precisely, the guys tried, and me, Marina and Irina were hanging around and making coffee. They adjusted the gasket in the extension tank lid and boiled the heat regulator in a pannikin (even two of them: the old and the new one). Both worked OK, so they didn't replace the old one. In the hope of a miracle we assembled everything that was disassembled, packed our stuff, got some water for the engine from our hosts and went back to Sevrey. It was time to part from Marina and Sergey: they went to the east, and our way was to get back to Bayan Khongor, then to Khyargas lake and back home.
People in the camping said there was a road to Bayan Khongor to the north of the dunes, but we opted to be on the safe side using a friend's GPS track and got back to Sevrey to drive south of the dunes. There is a well outside Sevrey, so we filled all bottles we had in the car and got from Sergey and Marina. The GPS track played Old Harry with us. It went to the north-west along a relatively good road for a long time, and then turned back all of a sudden and started going down to the south, to the mountains. We tried to follow it, and probably it was for nothing. We drove some time to the south totally off any road, then we found some slightly visible road and then we started thinking why were we going towards those mountains when there definitely must be parallel roads in the north where we already were and which was closer to our goal. So, we left the road and headed to the west. What we forgot to take into account was that there are lots of streams flowing down the mountains in spring, and all the valley was crossed by such dry streams, so it was annoyingly regular that we had to cross these smaller and larger canyons each and every 500 meters. It had a negative effect on both the car speed and the team spirit, so we drove in turns every 2 hours and tried to find any road leading to anywhere provided it could lead us to a road that followed the direction we needed. But there were no roads. We passed small oases, dead ends surrounded by cliffs, seen some circles made of saxaul bodies and got stuck in one of the canyons when a bush (I don't know if it was saxaul, but a very strong bush anyway) appeared under the rear axle. We were digging and trying to cut it with the axe, but it didn't help. So, we decided to try our luck with another such bush not far from us and winch to it. The bush was about my knee high, but it didn't even move a leaf when we winched out of the canyon and got free.
Sooner or later, we've found a road. But then the engine started heating, and we ran out of our water. There were lots of rain clouds in the skies and raining from time to time. Fortunately the map showed a well not far from us, and we could see a couple of yurts there, so most probably there really was some water. Mikha picked up our bottles and headed to the yurts while I was following him very slowly looking at the temperature sensor. The water was really deep, the pump in the well did not work and the electric generator next to it was out of fuel, so we had to make sort of a glass of a plastic bottle and dip the water from the cow drinking-bowl and fill the 5-liter bottles. Anyhow, we could collect enough water and continue our way.
So we were crawling until Bayanlig: sometimes stopped to cool the engine and add water with rain and wind coming down from time to time. We had a dubious plan to stay overnight in Bayanlig on Legiyn river, but it dried up and turned into a few slumpy puddles in a completely flat steppe with no trees or bushes. So, we headed to the north and pitched a small camp under the mountains not far from the village. The mountains looked solid, and one could think the road was going to the dead end, but a narrow canyon entrance opened when one came closer, and the road ran there.
On July 27, we continued through the canyon that was really picturesque, and an Eden valley that spreads after it, full of herds, yurts, pastures and wells. We really liked this place; it must have been nice to stay there for a bit longer.
After the valley, the road climbed a small mountain pass and went down to the slumpy Orog lake. There were sticky tracks, but not very hard to pass. There also was a car "monument" on the shore; who knows for how long it was standing there.
Then we passed Bogd and noticed some lakes on the map. We certainly headed towards the lakes hoping to take a bath and fill our water stock. The shore was not firm, but enough for the car. The lake was beautiful, but when we got closer, we noticed that the bottom was red and the water had a hydrogen sulfide smell, so we didn't dare to bath and fill our bottles.
When we got closer to Bayan Khongor, the road turned into asphalt. Before the city, we decided not to cross the river, but to follow the unpaved road along its bank and to stay overnight in some nice place by the water. It was a popular local leisure area, but we crossed the river and found a picturesque glade far from other people. We had lots of firewood, clear water and a free evening - something we really deserved. The dinner included frozen buuz we purchased in a local shop.
On July 28 we decided not to hurry. We were bathing, washing our hair, making dishes, and I could eventually wash the plastic container after the night Khermen Tsav "soup", save all food that could be saved and get rid of the rest. Then we went to Bayan Khongor to buy some food and the radiator sealer. There was a car service where one man spoke a bit of Russian and pretty good English. He recommended to ask the next gas station for the sealer. Then he personally came to the gas station and made sure the man there understood what we needed; however, they didn't have the sealer. We bought some antifreeze and were directed to the flea market where we should have been able to find the sealer. So we spontaneously did some shopping and purchased some souvenirs in the flea market, after which we eventually found the sealer and added it to the radiator and filled the extension tank with the antifreeze instead of water. After this we headed to the west. The sky was blue with small cheerful clouds, and the weather was fine.
We again wanted to eat buuz in the yurts on the road, but again it was that we had to wait for about an hour, so we left this place without eating. But before leaving it, we meet a couple of German guys on motor bikes there, and while we were talking, a couple of Suzuki Escudos from Netherlands approached, one towing another. I don't remember what exactly was wrong with the other car, but they complained that all their ropes were worn and looked jealously at my strap. We cheered them up saying that Bayan Khongor is close enough and that there is a garage and an English-speaking guy, and even if they cannot repair their car there, they at least can buy new ropes and straps. I also towed the other car to cross the small river using my strap as they were afraid their one wouldn't survive this.
Today we wanted to get as close to Uliastay as possible, so we passed Bayanbulag and started going up the mountains. We were getting higher and higher, it was getting colder and colder. The altimeter displayed about 3000 m, and it was really cold outside when we stopped overnight under the peak of the mountain pass at Higz Lake. We either chose a bad place or the entire lake was like this, but the shore next to us was very slumpy, so we approached the lake neither by car nor on foot.
In the morning of July 29 we quickly started, climbed the pass and got down to Otgon village after which we headed to the west following Khudzhirtyn-Am area, then along Khudzhirtyn river valley to the Khundlengiyn-Daba pass after which we got down to the Shiregiyn river valley. It was probably the hardest part of the trip that worked for its touristic rout category: there were high talus climbs or mauls, rain and side slopes... And people were living and wrangling there - fortunately there's lots of water in the valleys. And lots of demoiselles...
Then we passed Bugatyn-Daba and got Bogdyn river valley. There we met lots of trucks with horse boxes, each one normally followed by a new prepared off-roader. We found out that there was a festival in Uliastay and probably there was a horse fair or races or both. When we started down from the mountain pass before Uliastay, there was a real storm.
Because of the festival, it was not easy to find an open restaurant in Uliastay, but we did, and it could be great if we didn't have to wait for two hours until two of our hot plates got ready, then to wait for some time for the third (Irina's) one and to find out, when the lid already came off, that they won't prepare the third one. We had two almost finished plates and a hungry teenager. It is common for Mongols to not let you know that something you ordered won't be delivered. I was really angry and crushed a beer glass, but apparently it didn't help. We had to look for a supermarket to buy some ready-made food for Irina. So, she tried "Frutonyanya" fruit puree and some yoghurts - food that she has never eaten before.
There was some asphalt again after Uliastay, but we had to turn right to the unpaved road and go to the mountains. Cross-country driving, side slopes and picturesque landscapes again.
It was dusk when we fueled the car in Erdene-Khayrkhan, got down from the mountains and pitched a camp in Khunguy river valley not far from Dzabkhan-Mandal village.
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