Wait a minute!

There's a theme building here in Mongolia. Perhaps some mystic farce, sorry force has decided I'm traveling too fast and decided to slow me down a little...

Following my "Another day in the life posting" I've had plenty of time to contemplate things. This has take the form of a long days wait to try and get assistance from the point of breaking down in-between the borders, through waiting for the bike to get fixed in Olgii in amongst the Naadam festivities. It took another step after I decided to go for it in traveling between Olgii and Khovd only for the trip to come to a lurching painful halt again as I managed to get myself trapped underneath the bike mid way.

Although I managed to get back onto the bike and complete the journey I have to admit I was in quite a bit of pain when I arrived at Khovd. So I figured I'd have a bit of a break and a bit of a rest. Unfortunately by day three of my stay in Khovd I was still in a lot of pain walking and the paranoia about just how the bike had been made to work again had set in.

So, after a mild faff arranging transport and getting pretty angry after going to see a healer / physio type guy when I returned to find that against instruction the guys had lifted my bike into the back of the truck I was eventually off eight hours later than promised. The strop by the way was caused by my insistence to see just how they had secured the bike and the proposed (and implemented) securing mechanism was laying the bike on it's side on top of three tyres. After coming back down from the roof of the truck and realizing my other option had drove off I came back a little calmer and asked how they now proposed to secure the bike because it wasn't going to rattle all the way to UB (Ulaan Baatar). The new method was to take the truck and get lugs welded to the structure and attach the bike to these which made me a lot calmer.

By the time I left I thought that I would have plenty of opportunity to pay through the nose to get replacement parts sent out so I could get the electrics standard again. So, sending suitable instructions and a delivery address back to the UK I set off on a 1500km trip that had about 50 hours of driving and took 77 hours total. Yup that's an average driven speed of 30kph bumping uncomfortably along the tracks making up the main road to UB. About a third of the way through after visiting another Naadam in Altai and drinking some vodka we picked up a friend of the driver so the space in the cab became that little more cramped again.

Not to worry, we ate marmot and an assortment of other local foods on the way, drank airag a few times and had some beers in a truck the first night before driving off. I slept one night in the truck cab for two hours, another in a student halls with six in the room and another night with three of us on a hard wooden bench with a coat over me. Without my wee issues Id have missed out on all that.

So at half past midnight on Sunday morning Id managed to wake up Sybille from the Oasis guesthouse (intergam-oasis.com) and score myself a ger with the only Mongolian speaking security guard. The bike was unloaded safely and I could get a good nights sleep. Following my efforts earlier in the week to order up the spare parts I was happy in the knowledge that I would be on my way before long.

It's at this point that Mongolia strikes again because Monday brought no news on the spares delivery and it was only later on Tuesday that I found out DHL still hadn't picked them up. It's now mid afternoon here on the Wednesday, more than a week after trying to get the ball rolling with the spares and sadly there's no news of them being picked up never mind leaving the country. So, on a quoted delivery time of six days it looks like I'm in for a wait and I have to admit that I've been ready to move on for a while now.

Taking some positives from this though I've learned more about myself, a load about vehicle electrics, a lot about my bike in particular and also seen two Naadam festivals.

At Oasis I'm making up for barely seeing other bikers this trip by meeting bikers and 4x4 overlanders from Estonia, Finland (motolla-mongoliaan.blogspot.com), Australia, Northern Ireland (awayfromhere.org), Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, France (thetimelessride.com) and I hear that there's some Polish folk coming later today.

Although at the minute I've no idea when I'll be on the move again I'll find something to keep myself occupied for the coming days. Im having more time to rest the knee which has moved from searing pain at times to an occasional niggle and I'm meeting lots of interesting people.

I'll be happy to be on the move again though.

Location:Mongolia