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still visible on a dune on the far side of the railway - and he burst out laughing. His
look said it all: you are crazy guys! Nobody around here uses
that
road!
By mid-afternoon, we were sitting triumphantly on our cycles and munching
greedily on a big bag of biscuits. We'd found the real road, and pedalled no more
than a kilometre before a Russian-speaking driver pulled up alongside us. He told
us that it was only another sixty kilometres to the border town of Zamyn-Uud and
that the road wasn't really that bad at all! This was good news, as the day before
we'd lost our one and only map of Mongolia when it dropped out of a hole in Tim's
pack. Now that our position was pinpointed, we knew that we'd be at the border by
morning.
As we spoke, the driver offered us a sweet cream-wafer biscuit from a huge bag,
and we'd absentmindedly munched our way through the lot.
On a huge sugar high, we pushed on for several hours more. The going was hard
and we still had to walk through many sandy stretches, but after the ordeal of the
morning, and the day before, I felt invincible!
We drank our last drops of water at three thirty the next afternoon as the shim-
mering township of Zamyn-Uud came into sight on the horizon. It was twenty-one
days since we'd left Ulaan Baatar and we'd broken a score of records along the
way. It had been our longest stretch without washing, as well as our longest stretch
without contacting home. Although we'd forewarned that we might be out of touch
for a while, our parents had apparently been worried sick. Our bikes had been heav-
ier than ever before - up to ninety kilograms each at times - and at one stage, we'd
been carrying enough water to ride completely self-sufficiently for three and a half
days at a time. And to top all that? Well, through getting lost from time to time,
we'd managed to pioneer a route across the Gobi Desert.
Now, in the distance, we could see a long, glimmering fence stretching across
the horizon. It was the border! Beyond that fence lay all the exotic mystery of Ch-
ina. If we could get our bikes through to the other side - illegal - and manage to
ride - also illegal - then in a few short weeks, we would be in Beijing. Our very
lifestyle would be breaking the law, but other foreigners had managed to cycle in
China on conventional bikes. With luck we would manage on our recumbents, too.
I tried to get my head around the idea. A few kilometres away was China! The
whole time it had been so far off as to be no more than a dream. Could we really
have made it this far?
I looked into the distance and strained to see the Chinese border town of Erien-
hot on the other side. And when we reached it? Well, the past three weeks through
