World Tour - Europe, Asia, North and South America - Entries for: Mongolia

The day before Denis’ birthday we were heading down towards the Gobi. The road was challenging but we felt good and we were making some good kilometers. Up until Denis noticed some knocking sounds on his rear wheel again. We checked it out and soon we had to find out that his rear bearing had given up again! At the time we were in the middle of nowhere. So we had to make a decision. We all agreed we had to get back to Bayankonghor but the question was how. We decided to go to the nearby town called Jinst, but instead of going along the main road which was about 60 kilometers we decided to use the compass and go straight for 30 kilometers towards the city. It was amazing we rode across the steppes the entire time with no obstacles and just kept the direction of the compass. We bought some beers at the local supermarket and decided to sleep in the tent and celebrate Denis’ birthday that night.

The rest of this entry is written by Denis because we sadly had to split up the next day.

We celebrated my birthday midnight in the middle of nowhere with a small beer. Fabis beer had gotten a puncture in his left pannier and ruined all his cloths. We went into the tents and in the beds around 00:15. Since i knew my back bearing was broken I was already a bit worried about the next day. I decided that I wanted to try to get to Bayankonghor and hitch a ride from there to Ulanbaatar. It was properly the cheaper bearings that I had to put in in Russia.

The next day after packing up my only wish was to be able to make it back the 90 kilometers to Bajanchongor. Just a minute after we got going I heard some loud noises from the back of my bike… I stopped immediately just to find out that the bearing had disintegrated and one of the bearings balls had penetrated my rear wheel hub. As everyone can imagine my mood was at an all time low. After a short review Fabi decided to go to the nearby village to try and get a lorry for my bike.

After some time waiting I saw a big cloud of dust on the horizon. It was Fabi! Behind him was a small pickup truck. After a short time we had the bike on the flatbed and it was mounted tightly with 6 straps. I jumped into the car and took off with the entire family of the driver. Bajanchongor was 90 kilometers north and the driver managed to get there without a navigation system. The entire drive I was wondering how he knew what roads to take. But he knew the roads so well that he actually managed to get to the city 5 minutes before Fabi and Basti. We had agreed to meet back at the hotel that we were staying two nights before. One of the girls that worked at the hotel came out and watched us as we got the bike back down from the lorry. She asked us if she could help us in any way and after we had told her about our misery she quickly began calling some friends. After just a couple of minutes she had organized a truck that was heading for Ulaanbaatar this night! It would leave at 8 o’clock pm and it would take me and my bike straight to UB.

The truck driver rode through the night and I arrived in UB the next day without getting any sleep. Instead I got to try some typical Mongolian horse milk. But they were really nice to me and they made sure that everything was all right. They even checked back up on me the next day to make sure that my friends had arrived and that everything was set.
We rode around UB for about 3 hours at 40°C, since they had to unload a lot of stuff before we were able to get to my Africa Twin. Since the morning of my birthday I had been up for 28 hours and I was incredibly relieved to have made it to the Oasis Guesthouse in UB. At first I enjoyed a typical European dish - Wiener Schnitzel with french fries :).

After all the troubles with the Mongolian authorities and medical staff, it was finally time for Fabis Girlfriend, Steffi, to visit us in UB. Her flight was punctual and after we had spent the morning applying for the Chinese visa we managed to pick her up just in time. As expected we did not see much of Fabi and Steffi for the first two days but after that we all joined forces to give Gobi and our bikes a second chance. We had left some of our luggage back in UB to make sure we could enjoy our time in the desert a bit more. We were all expecting some heavy offroading with occasionally deep sand. As it would turn out we did not get disappointed.

The road to Dalandsadgad was paved all the way and we managed to complete the 650 kilometers within one day. The biggest issue were major headwinds from UB on out. Which is why we used a lot of fuel and Denis and Basti were actually pretty close to run out right before Dalandsadgad. In the end we managed to find a nice camp spot a couple of kilometers behind the city and were glad to watch the beautiful sunset together.

The next morning we decided to ride to Bayandalai, grab some food and drinks for the evening and try to fill up our bikes and spare tanks for the road ahead. Sadly the only gas station had closed and so we had to continue on without refilling the bikes. Since we were easily good for 300 kilometers or so we did not feel to uncomfortable soldiering on. We decided to ride north-west into the Gobi because we had heard that there would be some nice dunes and a beautiful countryside. On our way there we accidentally went into different direction and so Basti and Denis took the north route around a small dried out lake and Fabi and Steffi went south of that same lake. As it later turned out the southern route was terrible full of heavy washboards and deep sand. This is why Denis and Basti waited for quite some time until we all met back up close to where we had planned to spend the night. Basti meanwhile had gotten a rather severe sunstroke and was trying his best not to collapse in the sun. We quickly searched for a nearby yurt to have him take shelter and get some rest in.

The scenery at our campsite was great. We had the dunes right in front of us and it was impossible to stop Denis from trying to ride them up. So we threw the remain luggage into our yurts left Basti behind and went into the sand… we quickly had to find out that it would not be as easy as we had hoped for. Just before the dunes was a small swampy area which we managed to cross after some time but right after that we got very quickly stuck in the sand. We even tried letting some air out of our tires but it was no use in the end. We walked up the dunes for a while and spent the remainder of the day trying to get our bikes back out of the sand. It was a bit disappointing but it will certainly not be the last time that we will try.

That night we got served a fresh goat on the camp site. Denis was even offered to kill the goat which he eagerly declined - but it tasted great with some rice so we went to bed well fed and prepared for the next day. After going back to the same spot of desert with Basti and climbing up the dune all the way we took some nice pictures and headed towards Sevrei to refill the bikes and head back to Dalandsadgad. What we did not know at that time was that the road would be taking us right through the desert which meant for a stretch of 3 kilometers we had to struggle through deep sand once more. We tried using tracks made by other cars, going in with speed riding on the etches of the gravel/sand, Steffi had to walk most of the way... It took a lot of time and sweat to get through but once more we succeeded.

The rest of the road was easy to normal offroad right up until just 5 kilometers before Bayandalai where we suddenly hit deep sand again. It was late and we all just wanted to get through, Basti probably struggled the most due to exhaustion. Fabi did not want Steffi to walk all the way again so he kept her on his back. We all made it through but in the end we were really glad to get back on the paved road and out of the difficult sand.

The next day we rode the 650 kilometers back to UB and visited Gail to make sure he was doing all right. After we found out that the doctors had drained the blood from his lungs and things were looking up, we all went back to the hotel to spend the night in peace. Just before we settled into our beds Basti noticed two guys having a very close look at our bikes. We are pretty used to this and were not to stressed about it at first. Right up until they started looking through the bags on the Africa Twins handlebars. Right in front of our eyes they had the audacity to rummage through our stuff. At one point they looked up and as soon as they saw that Basti and Denis were getting ready to go there they ran off. But they had already taken Bastis sunglasses and some pocket knives he had in his bag. Luckily nothing else was missing so we parked the bikes right in front of the hotel and went back to bed.

Since we had almost exhausted most of our days in Mongolia we decided to spend the remaining time in Ulaanbaatar. As soon as we had moved into our Yurt chaos broke loose. We had pulled everything out of our bags to get some stuff sent back home and so we had unpacked all our stuff. But after a couple of days it was time to pack it all back up and head out to the Chinese border.

Gail was getting better with every day. And he was in high spirits even though we could see him hurting whenever he had to move. Still he was the first back in the saddle of his bike and he headed out a couple of hours before we managed to get started. We had planned to travel the 650 kilometers to Zamin Uud in two days and find a proper last camping spot.
We left UB late in the afternoon with a blue sky ahead. But after just 300 kilometers we saw black rain clouds coming up. We decided to skip camping and keep going to meet up with Gail in Zamin Uud. It took quite some time until it actually started to rain but just when the sun set it started. It was very difficult to ride in these conditions because it quickly became very dark. But in the end we managed to find the hotel Gail was staying in and booked two rooms.

We decided to travel with a guide and group through China, since China is more complicated then any other country we had been to so far. You will find more about certain regulations and laws in the next article.
We met the other travelers two days later in Zamin Uud, our group for the next 30 days was now complete. 4 Bikers and two dutch couples from Holland in 4x4 Trucks: Ruben and Jessica and Elko and Fleur.
We met that evening for the first time and we immediately knew we would have an exciting and fun 30 days ahead of us.