December 02 Olgy - Hovd Tract leg with mountain action
Different strokes for different folks: Our day started with an entirely unlikely breakfast. We ate shish kebab and soup in a Turkish restaurant. - Who knows when we will get such a square meal for the next time? Meanwhile a person with obviously different breakfast habits than our own had breakfast in our hotel room. The evening before, we found a raw piece of meat on bones in the freezer and when we came back from the Turkish restaurant to load our vehicles, we noticed that this ?different? meal was gone. Luckily we could abstain this special breakfast choice of the hotel!
Not only regarding the breakfast, but also with our telecommunication we crossed a border yesterday. We lost our service right after we left Novosibirsk and it came back only for the short border crossing from Russia to Mongolia. Luckily, Matthias was able to put or on-board solution with satellite-telephone, -fax and ?email into operation after no modern terrestrial communication worked! Nonetheless, on every milestone we are looking for reliable internet connection in order to send pictures and reports in higher quantities. The publishing house Ullmann and several other editorial departments as well as the project-page are constantly waiting for new information. In an exhausting one-hour-long action in a public internet caf? in Olgy, Hendrik and Astrid have been able to send the latest report from the border crossing from Russia to Mongolia and three pictures to the office in Limburg. It seems like we have to set new standards for this in Mongolia.
According to the upcoming kilometres, the next stage was quite short with just 200 kilometres from Olgy to Hovd. Therefore our photographer and film team spent much time on the street ? it was not very far anyway. But, this stage was the first one without a regular street at all. We slowly moved forward on tracks out of sand and stone. Besides that, we had to manage two mountain passes with a over 2.600 metres. Due to the heavy trailers, we had to drive in low gears for many kilometres.
The scenery was breathtaking. Lakes, a 4,000 metres high crest, snow covered mountains and ridges out of sand and snow were on our way. Sometimes in between it felt like we were driving through the desert. As far as we could see ? and that was really far ? there was no tree, no bush and definitely no other vehicles. On the 200 kilometres long road we crossed only one road sign. More than once we needed our Mongolian guide Nasaa to get us in the right direction.
As the scenery was beautiful then ever ? a wide tableland, lakes right and left and a sunset as kitschy as it could be ? we were challenged by a real off-road mission. Right in front of us, a truck broke into a frozen lake while trying to cross it. The two drivers had already piled up the freight next to the truck and made themselves a rough-and-ready tent out of a rag. That?s not much in contrast to the -24 ?C and a strong wind. They had been waiting for help for two days now. Without further ado, Matthias activated the winch. With full brakes and eight blocking tires, the Jeep and the trailer got pulled closer to the truck by the winch. Even together with the second vehicle with 8,5 tons in total, it was not possible to move the 12 tons truck which has already been frozen into the ice. With all possible effort and both vehicles, we tried for about 1 ? hours to help the truck drivers, unfortunately without success. We hope that the bulldozer which is on its way to rescue them arrives quickly in order to get these two drivers out of this life-threatening situation.
Nasaa?s family heartily welcomed us in their home when we reached Hovd. We were offered a great dinner and had good night?s sleep in our sleeping bags.
