Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
about our heads. We crawled out into the freezing gloom of pre-dawn and found
that, once again, our water bottles had iced over.
We huddled over the roaring, belching diesel stove as Tim cooked breakfast.
Then I packed up and set out - riding in all my clothes - while Tim sheltered out
of the wind behind his bike to watch the sunrise and update his diary.
About mid-morning I was startled out of a daydream by the sound of galloping
horse hooves. I pulled on the brakes and looked up to see a young Mongolian man
in traditional dress grinning curiously down at me.
'Sa sainbaino,'
he greeted me politely and I responded in kind. I asked him in
careful Mongolian if he spoke Russian or English. This was one of my few and def-
initely most useful, phrases. The man beamed at me with a gleaming white smile
and replied with an eager shake of his head that he didn't. I tried again in a few
Mongolian monosyllables and sign language and we got a bit of a conversation go-
ing. I understood enough to realise that he was inviting me back to his
ger
for some
tea.
I shared a few mugs of the delicious milky and slightly salty Mongolian brew
with the man and his family, and was obliged to have a few nibbles of sour goat's
cheese biscuits as well. I walked around the back of the
ger
to admire his herd of
about forty goats, wandering across the nearby hillside. I stayed for about half an
hour then set off to catch up with Tim.
We covered a lot of ground on a long and terrible track during the course of
the afternoon. The corrugations were shocking, and I alternated between a splitting
headache from the constant bouncing and falling over in the sand as I left the track
in search of a smoother route. Tim, on the other hand, was feeling great; zoom-
ing along somewhere in front he didn't stop for lunch until three. The next day,
however, the tables were turned. I was feeling fantastic and raced off, leaving Tim
to follow in my dusty tyre-tracks, miles behind.
I stopped to wait for him not far from Sainshand and we rode in together the
following morning.
———
Our first priority was to find food and lots of it. We pedalled up a rare strip of bitu-
men - the first we'd seen in over a week - then veered off the road and came to a
stop outside the door of the first eating house we saw.
It was locked. We prepared to ride on in search of another, but the small crowd
that had gathered urged us to stay. They were also waiting for the café to open too,
