I woke up at 0455 AM. The light comes very early. I started to read a bit about Mongolia and after an hour or so we both got up. We had breakfast and broke up the camp. We noticed we almost ran out of water, but decided not to go back to Darwi and look for a river. I checked the rear tyre thinking and hoping it will last until UB. Today we would leave Western Mongolia and enter Gobi.

When riding we noticed it got dryer and dryer. After a while we realized we were riding in the desert. At some point the road got terrible. There were several parallel tracks, but they all had the worst washboard I have seen. The bike and we were really being rattled apart. Creating new tracks was not easy because of soft sand and sharp big stones.

We saw a lot of birds and when coming closer they were not like the eagles or buzzards we saw yesterday, now they were even bigger. They were huge and numerous. It were vultures eating a dead camel. The smell was quite bad.

All of a sudden Larisa told me she smelled something weird, and I felt something weird. We stopped and the verdict was clear. Our rear suspension was lost. The oil had run out, and the spring was now working without damping. Riding the bike was like being a kangaroo now. It also happened about 125 before Altai and it was getting warm in the gobi, so still a while to go with almost no water. Larisa didn’t carry much in her camelbag because she had backpain the last days, and I drank all mine almost. There was about half a liter left for emergencies like this. We were lucky however and a jeep with doctors passed our way, they gave us water. Now we just had to make it to Altai.

It was very difficult as I couldn’t make speed because of the washboards. The bike has no watercooling and I was only able to ride about 20-30kph. This made the engine warm so I had to stop every 10km to let it cool down. Luckily there was quite some wind so we had not to wait too long. But it took us a while to get in Altai.

While riding we met two bikers on Yamahas, Greg and Christian. They both stayed in Oasis in UB and gave us a lot of useful info. They also have had problems with their suspensions.

In the evening we arrived in Altai and saw there is an airport. A flight to UB costs about 120 EUR and takes 2 hours. We looked in the town and found the Mongol Rally Service. There is a mechanic. We also had internet again, so I could send messages to my Belgian and Dutch friends to get help. Tomorrow we will remove the rear spring strut and try to fix it. I was quite exhausted and we went to bed early.