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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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