Category Archives: Mongolia

From UB to UU

I was very happy today because we were leaving the ger 🙂 After almost two weeks in a ger I was silently dreaming of a hotel room again, or my own tent. A ger can be nice from the outside but if you live in it for a while, you will find out that you are living together with mother nature. Spiders will be your best friends here!

So we got up early. Today would be a big test for the bike. The new rear shock was in place, but also the valves had been tuned. We left early also to evade the big traffic jams in UB.

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We rode outside of the city to the roundabout where we came almost two weeks ago. Now we didn’t take the turn for Olgii, but the way to Suukhbatar or the Russian border.

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It was asphalt all the way, so an easy ride. It felt great to ride with working suspension again. After fifty km’s I stopped to check my cylinders for oil leakage. During the last bike maintenance I had also checked the valves and the intake valves had to be tuned.

Indeed I saw some oil on the bottom of the gaskets. I will open them again, and really dry clean them. If it does not help I will have to replace the gaskets, which I have as spare parts.

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Under the way I was riding together with a CD car with a red license place. Apparently it was the ambassador of China in Mongolia. He stopped at the same place we did, and was very keen on the bike. We got another business card from a diplomate 🙂

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While we stopped, there was this little dog who came by. He was really cute! We were eating some Khuushuur we had left over from Broadway’s in UB. So we treated him.

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We reached the border of Russia with about 2 liters still in the tank. I know the Russian fuel is a lot cheaper so I really pushed it on. The border crossing was easy. First we could overtake all the lories. Then we had to do the usual paperwork. Passport control and bike control on the Mongolian side. We were out of Mongolia in like 30 minutes. There was Polish jeep and a German van, but they had to wait in line behind the other cars.

Next was the Russian border. It was the third time in three months! There were a lot of Mongol cars before the checkpoint. As always they put themselves in some kind of zigzag way so you pass them very hard. I asked politely if they would move their cars 20cm or so, but no way! So I just went over the grass and then they all started to horn, funny 🙂

The checkin for Russia went smooth as well. We just had to create a new document for the bike, my previous was only valid until 5/9. Our luggage was not checked.

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We rode into the first city looking for benzine and found 95 easily. Next we saw this large military base, and under the way a lot of tanks and infantery units training.

After riding 420 km or so I was starting to fall a sleep on the bike. Not so good, so it was time to stop at a stolovaya. Luckily there was one.

Once in Russia I think the landscape has changed a lot. We saw this big forrest with soft sand, hills. It was a robuust terain, but beautiful.

Before reaching Ulan Ude we also witnessed a nice lake. Suddenly it is in front of you.

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In the evening we reached the city of Ulan Ude, and just before the city we saw the road split. Following east would lead to Chita and further on to Yakutsk or Vladivostok. Following west would bring you to Irkutsk and lake Baikal. The latter was our destination.

We rode into town and checked in our hotelroom. It was a ride of 570km today. The bike had done fine, we were in our final country of the trip.

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During the trip we had lost some time here and there. Now the big question is will we go to the dalnii vostok or the far east or play safe and stay at Baikal and head home afterwards. It will be decided in the coming days…

The good life in UB

The trip has been long so far. We have covered more than 15.000km over the Central Asia, Russia and Mongolia. It was time to relax. So we did in UB. We enjoyed the western luxuries which can be found here.

We also met with the Buddha culture. Near our stay was a big monastery called the Gandantegchinlen Khiid. It is a Tibetan style monastery and the name translates to Great Place of Complete Joy. It was a nice place to walk through. The squares were almost completely covered with pidgeons as the locals were feeding them. I was praying they would not shit on me as they flew over with hundreds 😉 The belief here is that it is a good deed to feed them, as they may be a relative or friend from another life. At least I think this is the meaning. I spoke to a local and he told me he was thinking about his dead mother when he was feeding the doves. Larisa liked to play with the doves! We walked further on the temple ground until we saw very big feet and the large temple with a gold covered huge buddha statue inside.

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Our next stop was the book shop Papillon, again 🙂 I like to read a good book and have a cup of tea with it in a good sofa. After this pause, we wanted to know even more about Mongolia so we went to the National Museum of Mongolia. This is a quite good museum I think and covers about the whole history.

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We stopped at a good restaurant called Broadway for some food. We also got a bit fatter again. In the Pamirs and Mongolia we both lost some weight. I think we regained a good amount of it here again. The food is really tasty here. Actually we went a couple of times to this place.

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We walked over the Sukhbaator square again, and decided to make the walk a lot bigger by walking to the Zaisan memorial. Normally this is done by bus, but we like walking. It is important to keep in good shape if you ride the bike as well!

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The Zaisan memorial is a war memorial which honours soviet soldiers killed in World War II. During the walk we witnessed many new apartment blocks arising. The walk takes you to the south of the city where you get to a soviet tank. From there you climb 600 steps to a panoramic view over the city. There was some wind here and Larisa had a skirt, so she acted a bit like Marlyn Monroe here 🙂

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It was getting pretty freezing outside. I could feel this is the coldest capital in the world. Not the coldest big city, which should be Yakutsk, right Ivan? 😉

They say that after the Nadaam autumn begins. Yes indeed, it was about 15 degrees and windy. So we took the bus back and were hungry again 🙂 We ate in the Grand Khaan Irish pub again.

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We finished the evening in the Blue Sky Lounge on the 21th floor which gives you also a nice view over the city to watch the sunset. It was a nice last evening before leaving Mongolia…

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The bike is fixed

I could not have done it alone, so I am very grateful to my friends and loved ones for their help and support. So this is a word of thanks to my lovely girlfriend Larisa, to my parents back in Belgium, to my BMW dealer and to my friends Hendrik and Katrin. Thanks for getting the bike back in shape!!!

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The shock was fitted quite easily. Afterwards there was some extra work which needed to be done. I had to tune the valves. As you can see on the picture I had a little helper for this job 🙂

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In the evening everything was done and Hendrik and Katrin invited us for pizza. It was totally selfmade and the best pizza I had eaten in … Hey I can’t remember!

We were now almost ready to leave UB and head north again.

Larisa is back in town, with the shock :)

At 0600 this morning I was woken up by my driver. I had a ride to the airport. Larisa sent me a message yesterday when she was in Moscow.

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We arrived at the airport and was waiting anxiously to see her back. She came out the doors as the first one. That’s my girl 🙂

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She looked great, the trip to Belgium had done her good I could see. She also had a package for me. Nice work!

In the afternoon we are going to Hendrik to install it. I will come back with more details later…

UB

It was time to go for a walk in the big city. Ulaanbaatar is the capital of Mongolia and it’s cultural, financial and Industrial heart. Nevertheless there are only about one and half million people living here. Mongolia has a total of three million people.

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If you walk around you can see the city and economy is almost exploding here. In most of the modern cafes you will find European prices. Everywhere you can see new buildings arising. But if you look closely the workers are not Mongolian, but Korean or Chinese. A north korean person can make relatively good money here.

I believe Mongolia has maybe the fastest growing economy in the world nowadays. If there is an economist reading this, please correct me if I am wrong. The reason is the richness in the soil. There are many minerals to be found, and lots of mining companies. But it is mostly big multinationals exploiting this.  I also get the feeling all young people in the country are drawn to the city.

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Wages of people here have drastically increased so people live on total different standards then in the country. You will find any shop you can imagine and brands like Burbery, Gucci, D&G. Out of curiousity I checked a few shops like Boss and Omega. Prices are quite higher than in London for example.

The mongols like to dress up, you can see it in the Streets and in the cafes. In the cafe you can see there are more women than men. First reason is statistically, there are simple more women. Secondly men go more out working in countries like South Korean to get more money.

Another thing I noticed is that there are some big fellas walking around here. I think the Mongols are the biggest of the Asians. Better not mess with them 🙂 When they are in a car they are like always racing, so I had to lookout when crossing roads here!

The main square is the Sukhbaatar square where there is a statue of Ghengis Khan.

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I went looking for a bookstore and found a store called Papillon. It is a great little shop and has all the greatest works in English. So I was reading in this shop in the afternoon some books.

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In the evening I met with my mongolian friend Tuvshin. We had beers in the famous Irish pub Grand Khan. There was a great band playing, called beers 🙂

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Saying goodbye to my loved one

We got up at 4am today to ride to the airport. Luckily the traffic is ok at this time and we got in half an hour at UB airport. The flight to Moscow was at 7am, we were well in time.

Saying goodbye to Lárisa was really hard for me. We had been together almost every second for the last 2.5 months.

I rode back with the lady of our guesthouse and had tears in my eyes. It was hard to believe this was a reality. I watched an amazing sunrise above the city when riding back. I hope the next five days will go by fast. But I need to rest myself as well, and regain strength.

I am not letting her go, but this is a good song from Passenger…

Well you only need the light when it’s burning low  Only miss the sun when it starts to snow  Only know you love her when you let her go  Only know you’ve been high when you’re feeling low  Only hate the road when you’re missing home  Only know you love her when you let her go  And you let her go

 Staring at the bottom of your glass  Hoping one day you’ll make a dream last  But dreams come slow and they go so fast  You see her when you close your eyes  Maybe one day you’ll understand why  Everything you touch surely dies

 But you only need the light when it’s burning low  Only miss the sun when it starts to snow  Only know you love her when you let her go  Only know you’ve been high when you’re feeling low  Only hate the road when you’re missing home  Only know you love her when you let her go

 Staring at the ceiling in the dark  Same old empty feeling in your heart  ‘Cause love comes slow and it goes so fast  Well you see her when you fall asleep  But never to touch and never to keep  ‘Cause you loved her too much and you dive too deep

 Well you only need the light when it’s burning low  Only miss the sun when it starts to snow  Only know you love her when you let her go  Only know you’ve been high when you’re feeling low  Only hate the road when you’re missing home  Only know you love her when you let her go  And you let her go  Oh oh oh no  And you let her go  Oh oh oh no  Well you let her go…

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Removing the rear shock and meeting with a friend

We had slept very well until the phone rang. It was Hendrik. I had spoken to Hendrik yesterday to let him know we were in town. He was already in UB for a while waiting for parts for his truck.

We first met Hendrik and Katrin in Kazakhstan in Kulsary. Unfortunately his truck had suffered badly from the Kazakh roads.

So we got ready quickly and met with Hendrik outside. Lárisa went in the van and I followed with the bike. We drove outside of the city but in eastern direction this time.

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We arrived at a big gate where his truck was located. But there were more trucks. It was a great place with a nice garage as well. Perfect to do the job.

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He had other guests as well, Pjotr and Ulia from Ukraine were camping on the site for one day. They were from Ivanofrankovsk, the west part of Ukraine, and travelling on a Dnipro bike. Lárisa was happy to see some fellow country men and talked to them.

In the meantime Hendrik and I got to work. In less than an hour the rear shock was removed. Hendrik really had all tools you could imagine. I was like a BMW workshop here 🙂 We did also some other work. We fixed one of the broken side lights. We cleaned the air prefilter, which was very dirty. The airfilter itself was still ok. The brakes were still ok.

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In the meantime Pjotr came by saying they were ready to ride on. We said goodbye.

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Another job which needed to be done is tuning the valves. But I will do this job later. So Hendrik came along with some cold beers. Bikes and beers. So we went outside to see our babes. Hey they were making the food already. A nice shastlik was waiting for us 🙂

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We sat together during the afternoon and talked about our travels and further plans. Once their truck was finished they would spend time to discover Mongolia further and then proceed probably to Thailand via China. Hendrik and Katrin were very friendly and even brought us home. The traffic was pretty crazy. You need one hour to cover 10km or so. We made a quick stop under the way at Oasis and met Jan again, he just arrived on his bike.

In the evening we prepared Larisa’s pack as she was flying early tomorrow to Belgium.

From the old to the new capital

Today would be our longest ride so far in Mongolia. We had to cover about 370km but the roads should be really good now 🙂 Well they should be asphalt at least I mean. Well don’t count the first 70km or so 🙂

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The first km were offroad but went fine as our batteries were charged again. Hey, we even had breakfast today. I think it was our first big breakfast we had in a while!

We reached the asphalt again and watched the landscape change. It would be a relaxing ride to the capital now. We stopped at a small buddha statue to relax and met a Czech biker called Jan. He was heading for UB and after that probably China.

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On the road we saw an accident. Maybe someone hit a pothole. They are really huge here, like 30cm deep or more.

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Twenty km before the city there were even double lanes. But traffic was quiet. We stopped just before the center to get some sugar in our systems and also to clean the bike. It would work on it tomorrow and prefer to do it on a cleaner bike.

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Traffic in the center was a bit crazy, we almost got hit by a big Lexus twice.

We stopped near the Gandan district to find a guesthouse. Prices are still ok here and the location is central. Actually I was in UB 6 years ago. You could say before the big boom. Prices were still very low then, you could find a place for $5. Now the town is booming. Apartments are rising everywhere. Prices of hotels are almost like Moscow or London. The cheap days are over here.

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As I would stay here for a while I found some good budget deal in Gandan’s guesthouse. Hell it was a ger again, but ok, pretty funny in the center of a big city 🙂

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We got ready to hit town and eat a lot! We found some american burger restaurant and had French fries with mayonaise, double cheeseburger and beers. Great! Afterwards a chicken kebab and more beers, I was hungry 🙂

 

The temple of Erdene Zu Khiid

I knew there was a catch to our hotel. When we got to bed we found out why. Next to the hotel a crane started digging around 10pm! We told the receptionist and she told us they would stop after an hour or so 🙂

In the morning we made a little walk through town before leaving.

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Our plan of the day was to visit the city of Karkorum where we would see the temple of Erdene Zu Khiid. This is said to be the first budhist monastery in Mongolia. It had between 60 and 100 temples at its glory days. But the soviets destroyed most of them. So we could only see three of them now.

We had to decide which road to take, offroad again through the mountains, but a lot shorter. Or follow the main asphalt road. My back was really almost broken by now, so I decided to take the asphalt. Read on and see if it was really asphalt all the way.

The first kms were asphalt indeed. It was a bit bumpy but ok. I had to be careful as the rear spring would act like a catapult if you go to fast in a bump.

After an hour we saw a roadsign pointing to Khujirt. Only 44km and then another 30km and we would be in Karkorum. But there was so much water we quickly went to the main road again. I still don’t know if it was a good option.

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After a while there were roadworks again and we had to ride through the fields. They were quite muddy. Some trucks and cars got stuck in the mud, but we got through. It felt almost like riding on ice I guess but we didn’t fall 🙂 We kept going until we stopped at a yurta to say hello. The woman was working with the khimiz, she offered but we politely refused.

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As we were riding on, still in the mud, people were pointing us how to go. I think we did at least 20km, so I was seriously doubting that we should have taken the short cut through the mountains. We got through the fields ok and hit on asphalt again.

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It was pretty bumpy and there were big potholes, so care had to be taken always. We reached another crossroad. One pointed to UB, the other one to Karkorum.

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We were happy as it was all new asphalt. We even road up a hill to enjoy a great view.

Our happiness was short though as after 5km the asphalt stopped again and there were more roadworks. The last 70 would be a bit difficult.

I got really angry at some point because of some idiot driver. If you overtake some people, then they start racing to overtake you again. I can’t go too fast, so it happened. Then once you are overtaken they go really slow so you can eat their dust. I almost went as he hit the brakes real hard and we fell over. No big deal but he better come not to close to me this guy! Anyway I guess I was getting tired.

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We reached the temple in the evening and had a look around. There were also some stone turtles to see. One was well hid on a mountain top outside of the town. There was also somekind of phallic rock. I rode up to it with the bike, and a mongol started shouting really loud to me. No idea why but we took off. I guess it was not my day.

We stopped at a hostel called Jim Morin, but we did not see Jim. We had some warm food and slept in a ger. A bit touristic but what the heck. At least we knew there were many spiders now in a ger 🙂

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We went to bed early as tomorrow we had a big ride. It would be the final one for a while!

 

A rainy ride to the great fast horse

I felt sick in the morning, headache, backache, stomache… So I stayed in bed most of the morning. Lárisa went out to do some shopping. In Mongolia it is normally better to ride early as in the afternoon there is a very big chance for rain. Indeed around 12 o’clock or so it started raining heavily.

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We discussed the last night with Adrian what is interesting on our way and we saw the ancient capital called Karakorum was not so far and seemed interesting. There is a big temple, which was mostly destroyed by the Soviets in 1937, but still was worth to visit.

We also needed to decide what to do with the bike part. Should we use a company like DHL or spedition or go ourselves. I checked with spedition in Germany but they were slow in response. I guess because in our case we have to bring back the old part and leave with the new part it is more complicated. So we decided to buy airline tickets. The only one who could do it was Lárisa. I need a visa to enter Mongolia. She does not. So we bought tickets with Aeroflot. Lárisa would flow via Moscow to Brussels next week.

One worry less, we decided to push on. Our daily average in km was around 200km. The next big town of Avaikheer was exactly 200km so we decided to move. It was already 2pm by now and still raining. The guys in the hotel tried to convince us to stay.

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We wouldn’t listen and moved on. After the first few km there was off road again. Uphill in the mud, not very cool. Luckily only 5km or so. Then again asphalt. We advanced well but it was very wet!

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After a while we still had 50km to do or so when I saw road construction. No way the asphalt was not completed yet. Normally no problem, but it had rained so much that the offroad almost looked impossible. We decided to continue through the road works but then we first had to go over a small hill. Hmm the cluth smelled a bit burnt after doing that!

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We gently continued and finally reached a temple, still in the rain, with a big horse statue. We had to pay 500 Togrog to get in. At the statue we met people in a jeep. It were belgians! One was actually the consul of honour of Mongolia in Belgium, named Paul Van Wouwe. He gave us his card, just in case I guess. The statue was of a specially fast horse. The next town Arvaikheer was actually named after it.

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We reached Arvaikheer soon now, and searched a hotel. Same drill, no English, too expensive… Ok after the fourth one we found a good one. We took of all the wet clothes and had a warm shower. There was a nice little restaurant on the other side of the street and we had a good meal.

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Tomorrow we ride to the old capital which was built by the son of Ghengis Khan.