At last, out of China into Mongolia

After several days in China sorting the burocratic madness. we managed to get away from their customs post at Erenhot after a wait of seven hours. Absolutely infuriating.especially as we were then welcomed into Mongolia with open arms and only 30 minutes of paperwork to do

Stayed at their frontier town of Zamyn Uud then set off into the Gobi at 6am last Sunday following a myriad of tracks and using the GPS to keep us on the right course.

a Gobi local

Since our last crossing of the Gobi in 2007 the tracks seem to have become much rougher with terrible corrugations which quickly took a toll on the cars reducing our speed to some 10 mph, but no probs with overheating as actually it was quite cold with several storms giving Kip a soaking as no hood on his car.

Arrived Saynshand after 12 hours driving, in a sandstorm.

Set off late as had to wait till banks opened to get some dosh, then 9 hour drive to a sort of shanty town where we stayed in very basic but very friendly accommodation after another terrible day's driving during which Kotka's steering arm sheared. I had a bad job getting off the broken piece, having to use a hacksaw, then modifying a bolt to get it back together again. Both cars suffering from timing probs as well.

 

Manhandling Myrtle's load uphill in the Gobi to enable her to do the climb

Up at 5.30am and set off at 6 for another days bouncing about on corrugations, plus rocks, sand drifts (twice we had a car nearly overturn when sand collapsed beneath us). Then Myrtle's fan pulley sheared, but she is such a cool customer, and there was so much head wind, that we managed to keep her temperature down to normal.




One climb so steep that we had to unload Myrtle and manhaul contents up the hill on foot before finally getting her up.


Exited Gobi at about 2pm with awful American high fives, then filled up with petrol- to find it was contaminated so ran next hundred miles on less than full set of cylinders on both cars.

Good luck "ovoo" to circle three times