August 5th

B - reporting

We breakfasted on coffee, eggs & toast and saw hoofprints really close to Swiss - about 5 feet away! Very nice to think that we were in the middle of a herd of horses in the night. Then headed for Kharakorum - Chinggis Khan's capital city.

The road became a dirt road very soon - have we seen our last tarmac till Russia? The dirt was fine, but we could not find our turning for Kharakorum...after some confusion we picked a track heading south-ish, which we hoped would join the road we should have taken. We do have a GPS, Vera, but she is a bit tempramental in Mongolia and does not always know the way. We would have been a lot happier if at this point we had a full tank of gas (petrol, if you will).

So we drove and drove, on a bumpy track but not too bad, down valleys and over hills until we found a small town with a petrol (gas, if you will) pump! Hurrah for low octane petrol!

We continued, through the valleys, past a small town having a horserace where all the jockeys seemed to be ten year old boys, and finally found a tarmac road leading to Kharakorum! I have no idea where it came from, or how we missed it. So we arrived at the old monastery, which is the only structure to contain any of Chinggis Khan's old city (the monks used his walls for their foundations). We looked round the monastery (sad to report, the most exciting thing about it was flush toilets, yes we are philistines).

We tried to find internet, or even a phone, but had no luck. So after successfully purchasing WD40 from the market, we decided to leave. We headed west, and by 5pm, when it looked like rain, we drove off the track over a hill to a valley behind, and set up camp before the rain fell. We had delicious beers under our awning, then dined magnificently on Spam and veggies. Spamtastic, but this was our only tin! Mystery meat from now on...

The stars were so bright at night that I could see the big dipper from my sleeping bag, even without wearing my glasses.