Day 35 Mount Tsambagaray Uul to Khovd

High point : waking up to our amazing campsite on the High Mongolian steppe surrounded by mountains and flowing rivers.

Low point : the battering martha took on the main Mongolian highway, just brutal!

No point . Our mozzi spray that seems to be attracting them rather than stopping them.

Authors comments:

For the best part of 12 months before FTFE left Greenwich I had my face stuck in a Mongolian lonely planet, dreaming of one day seeing the image on the front cover for real. Yesterday morning when I unzipped our tent, that photo was finally right infront of my eyes. Bursting with brilliant colour and boasting a gigantic size that makes you feel truly small the Mongolian steppe is one of the wonders of the natural world that leaves you begging for more and more.

To help you get an idea of what the Steppe looks like, imagine standing in the biggest, Greenest meadow you have ever seen. . .now double the size of that Meadow and surround it with high snow capped mountains. Next, add rivers and streams that flow swiftly down from massive glaciers and weave their way through endless plateaus.. and you`ll be there!

Awaking early here you get a True sense of being in another world, with the Silence (when the golden girls of Ben and Dave aren’t snoring) adding to the whole feeling of magnificent isolation from our normal worlds.

Agi, our guide for the past 2 Days had left us with the highly detailed (for Mongolia) directions in how to reach the main highway to Khovd . . . “drive over the riverbed then Keep to the right of the Gers (nomadic homes) head towards the highest snow capped peak then turn left at the lakes”. Easy we thought, and set off full of smiles into the unknown depths of this vast land with no one now to hold our hands. The sense of adventure was fantastic and the crew were on good form! I was first up behind the wheel and faced the challenge of driving over a huge dried out river bed that floods every spring as the winter snows melt. Martha lapped up the task and then powered through a fast flowing river crossing before finally flying up a steep bank and onto another huge great plain! Truely Awesome!

6 hours later we arrived at our campsite in khovd. Martha had taken her first true test off road driving and passed pretty well ( a slightly lose exhaust, lose door hinges, and most importantly the radio had stopped working!)

We also faced our first in encounter with mongolia’s worst inhabitant, the mosquito. It was only after each of us had taken over 50 bites each that we read that this area of Mongolia gets infected with billions of the biters in mid to late august each year. We were well and truly in mozzi high season! We all went to bed scratching areas of our bodies that I don’t need to mention And starting the now team ritual of applying after bite to our bodies.

In parting I will leave you with the best fact of the day that ben has worked out for us. . . Stage 2 crew haven’t had a proper shower for over 1300 dirty kilometres.

The cab is stinky.

James

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