We had slept well although it was pretty cold on the mountain top. I got out of the tent and enjoyed the view. Today would our last big offroad part. After that we have heard that it would be all asphalt. Pay attention to the word would 🙂

The ride of today was only 160km. But it had rained a lot recently so there was quite some mud and the washboards were not gone yet. I think they never are in Mongolia. Under the way we saw more camels and horses, but nothing we hadn’t seen before until we crossed a bridge and found ourselves in a nice canyon. Time to stretch the legs and do some climbing 🙂

We kept driving until we reached the next little town called Bembeger. We stopped at the local store to buy some fish and bread for lunch. Of course the locals came out and wanted to us and the bike from close. I smelled a bit too much alcohol and decided to leave town rather fast.

A few km out of town we stopped for a road side picknick. If you want to do a private picknick just make sure you are not seen from the road, otherwise everyone who passed by and stop to come and say hello. In the distance we could see big rain and thunder clouds. It would mean lot of mud.

We rode on and were passed by a german truck who was riding rather fast. After struggling through the mud I started feeling my back a bit too much and decided it was resting time again. But there were a lot of camels who came to the road to drink. A camel can drink up to 200l and we saw they were thirsty.

The next obstacle was a broken bridge. The river crossing was ok, it was a bit steep on the banks but I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted to reach the next town and find a bed to rest. We crossed it and rode the last 40km or so when it started to rain on us. We would reach Bayankhongor quite wet.

In town we filled up and noticed the gasoline prices have dropped again. So the closer to UB, the cheaper it gets. We checked out a few hotels. First one was too expensive, next one had no electricity and no hot water. We ended up passing a dinosaur park and found a soviet hotel which was adequate and had a garage!

In the hotel we met a couple called Adrian and Polina. They both lived in Berlin but Lena was originally from Sakhalin and they were both on their way to Sakhalin to visit her family. We had a few beers and ate Tsuivan, again 🙂