3rd Aug - Finally get to the lake

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I woke up at 6.30 with a man outside cutting wood. Jenna was still dead to the world and so I enjoyed some time to myself writing my dairy and listening to the news on my ipod. Having spent the first few months of this trip really enjoying not following the news and having some time where I was not challenging my brain my brain is now craving things to think about and challenge it. Thank-you radio 4! I love the podcasts of intelligent debate about so many things. I have worked my way through loads of the documentaries and news reports. I am also working my way though some of the classics thanks to Fibrox at supply free audio classics.

We got ready slowly and we were on the road by 10. The lady wanted 15000 for the nights accommodation but she had said 10000 last night. She seemed to say that her husband said we should pay more when he returned in the morning. I was not happy about that and she accepted 10000 (but I then bought her lovely kids some sweets to the equivalent amount).


It was a gray morning and was raining when we left. The roads were wet and muddy. The route to the lake is not great as they are building a new road and this runs parallel to the other tracks. It is difficult to find a good route and we ended up going on and off the new road. Fortunately the skies cleared and it was then a lovely morning. We stopped about 20km along the road at the top of a pass for a cigarette break for Jenna but just ended up lying in the sun for ages. It was lovely and warm on the face after the miserable rainy morning.

As we were lying there, a German called Andras pedaled to us to say hello. We chatted to his for a while and then all headed off towards the lake together. Andras is 3 months into his journey. He biked from Holland to St Petersburg, then traveled on the trans-Siberian to UB and wants to head south into China after Mongolia.

Not long after we meet Andy, we then met another cyclist traveling in the opposite direction and stopped to chat. He was the first Mongolian cyclist I have seen touring. He was cool. He is carrying very little in terms of supplies and instead just does long distances to make sure he can get to towns to eat. He only carries 3litres of water and chocolate and biscuits. His bike and equipment weighs half of mine.

I was rather jealous of the distances and sped which the Mongolian cyclist could do with so little weight and then I realised that I actually really don't mind going slower and carrying some things that I really enjoy like a laptop and camera to take good photos, fresh coffee, fresh fruit and veg.....


There were loads to tracks into town and I lost the others and could not see them behind me and so I assumed they might have just taken another route. As there were 2 now I headed on into town and found the closest restaurant on the main street and ordered us 3 meals. When they still had not arrived after 1 hour I was getting rather worried. I could not get through to Jenna on her mobile. Their food was getting cold. I asked a couple of trucks coming through town if they had seen 2 cyclists and they said they were on their way so I stopped worrying. It turned out that Janna back pannier rack had snapped in two and they had to stop and fix it using her bike stand.


We left town after waiting for a storm to pass and biked over the hill up the lake. Once we got there we had to spend another hour fixing Jenna's pannier rack.


We found a lovely campsite out of the way of other people with a pre-existing fireplace and built a fire, cooked our dinner of pasta, veg and tuna on the camp fire, had a bottle of wine and some beers and listened to blues music on my ipod :-)


We even went for a swim and a wash in the freezing cold lake! Good cyclist tan-lines everywhere.....


At the campfire I added up the distance to the border in the west (where I have to leave by the 17th on my Mongolian Visa) and found that on the short route (via the river with no bridge on small roads) is 975km where as the longer route on the "main" roads (still dirt tracks) is 1107km. It seems to make sense to go the longer more reliable route. I only have 14 days todo it, which is 14 days of solid biking at 80km per day. Possible but very very hard on these roads and it partly takes the enjoyment out of seeing the country.I will have to hitch some of the way.