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that wound aimlessly into the distance. With the compass and some guesswork we
set off.
For the next two days we saw little transport, and the only gers were tiny flecks
in the distance. Time passed and I fell into a lethargic daze. The corrugations and
bumps threatened to upset my stomach completely, and the headwind continued
unabated. I ate almost nothing except some dry, tasteless biscuits and stopped fre-
quently to relieve my bowels. The nights were plagued with the same draining the-
atrics, making sleep scarce. This left me constantly thirsty, yet anything I drank and
ate went straight through. To make it worse, we had rationed out the drinking water
to 1.5 litres per person per day, so there was little water to waste.
The further we headed away from the railway, the wilder the landscape became.
The tracks were barely used, and we relied increasingly on guesswork.
On the third morning we came across a shallow lake. The water was brown,
salty and only a couple of centimetres deep. But we decided it was the perfect loc-
ation for an early lunch. As we were cleaning up, my temper boiled over. For the
past few days Chris had taken to licking the knife clean - again.
In the heat of the moment, I cracked. 'Chris, what are you doing licking the
knife clean? I thought we decided last year that it was banned!'
'What! Since when? That's the way I do things. It's my knife. I don't think it's
unhygienic and anyway, we don't have enough water to waste on cleaning.'
From there side-track arguments grew upon side-track arguments and we con-
tinued to scream insults at each other. It went on for an hour until we were both
ready to pass out. For a while we slumped to the ground and lay panting for breath.
Then we just started again.
By the time we finished I felt more exhausted than after a day's ride, when in
fact we had only ridden about ten kilometres. From the lake we struggled five kilo-
metres further and set up camp, agreeing that the day was as good as written off.
That night I had an ominous feeling that I was about to fall seriously ill. In a
desperate attempt to revitalise myself I pulled out all the vitamin and mineral tab-
lets I had and popped a couple of each. Then I found a concoction in a small bottle
that was some kind of therapeutic oil. The Buryatian family had given it to me to
use in case of bad health. I dabbed a bit onto my hands and rubbed it into the beard-
free skin on my face and over my chest.
Morning brought with it the unfamiliar feeling of a settled stomach. I sat up and
moved … still no nausea. Chris was already up and for some unknown reason do-
ing push-ups near the tent. With the sudden wave of good health, I decided to join
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