We got on the bikes early today, as this is the day we cross into Mongolia, and borders are always an adventure.
Marilyn was back on a bike, riding with Janis, at least to the border. Since her crashed motorcycle was in the van, she had to cross with it for inspections and to present title and registration paperwork.
The villages seem newer, more organized and tidier the closer we get to Mongolia.
The larger towns still have the old, ill-maintained, blocky Soviet-era apartment buildings.
And we still have to deal with cows on the road...
...and sometimes heavy machinery overtaking on the right as we wait for the cows. A little surprising to me, but didn't phase David.
The countryside is changing. It's getting sandier, and there are very few trees.
We also saw more buddhist shrines.
Our morning coffee stop...
was next to a temple.
A great place to stop.
Back on the bikes, we continued to ride in open country, on a two lane road, passing the occassional village.
After a while Janis pulled to the side of the road to let everyone catch up in preparation for...
a passport check point and a great new 4 lane divided highway that wasn't even on the GPS. Here we are shown on the GPS map as off-road because the road was just opened and not yet on the map.
The new road led up to the border crossing. Each crossing has offices and inspections for the country we are exiting, and then a short no-mans-land, and then more inspections, stamps, and offices for the country we are entering.
Exiting Russia wasn't too bad, but the Mongolian side was to put it mildly - inefficient. We were shuffled around to a couple of diffent checkpoints, but then the officials didn't follow through and give us the correct stamps. Some people returned to the bikes with one or two of the four stamps required to get into the country. We eventually sorted it out, and were able to move on to the insurance booth after 2 hours.
The insurance took another half hour, so after four of our bikes finally got through the last barrier, we stopped a few hundred feet away to wait for the others and have an ice cream.
After waiting 15 minutes in the heat, we decided to go on ahead to the hotel. Boz is ready to lead Geoffry, Tom/Mona and Dave/me onward.
Welcome to Mongolia.
It seemed like we were riding forever with nothing in sight except the smokey horizon. We were within a few kilometer of our hotel, but couldn't see any sign of a town large enough to support a hotel.
Finally, we came to some traffic...and another checkpoint. Except this guy wanted money. Since we hadn't gone to an ATM yet, we didn't have any Mongolian tugriks. Boz told him he only had rubles, but he insisted on tugriks. The longer we stayed there the more it seemed like it was a set up. We finally just left and no one chased us.
The hills of Mongolia had hid this huge city from view. We were close to the hotel.
On arrival, we were ready for a cold drink. Little did we know.
We had been forwarned that there was very little choice of hotels in this area. However, when we got to our room, we discovered a very hot room with no air conditioning, bedspreads and headboards with tears and cigarette burns, but the best part was...
The art on our wall.
We thought Steve and Mary Jane's was better.
So... I think we stayed in the town bordello for the night.
We went back to the reception area to see if there were any rooms with a/c, or if we could at least change our room to the shadier side of the building. Again we had language difficulties. She said they had 5 air conditioners. We took it to mean 5 rooms with air conditioning, but no. She meant they had 5 fans for the rooms. We soon had one in the room. It helped - a little.
Dinner made up for the hotel. Geoffrey was approached by a young man as he took his motorcycle to the secure hotel garage. He welcomed us to Mongolia and handed over a brochure for a pizza restaurant. Geoffrey thought that anyone that nice should be rewarded and convinced a few of us to join him after a quick shower.
The restaurant was right across the street from the hotel. Yes, it looks sketchy, but it was very good pizza and a fun evening. Sleeping was tough on hard mattresses, and it was noisy. The second floor of the hotel had private "Karaoke" rooms that are for rent with the scantily-clad "hostess" of your choice. The hotel basement also has a large massage "spa". So we basically stayed at a big whorehouse for the first night in Mongolia, but I don't think anyone caught anything.
Tomorrow we will ride deeper into Mongolia, apparently to a five-star resort that should be a highlight of this adventure. It is hard to believe that we are over 6,000 miles into this ride, yet have not yet covered even half the planned 13,000 miles, and fewer than half the days. In a few more days we will enter China, where more than half of this adventure will take place. While Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Siberia have also been world class lifetime experiences, we are all anticipating that China will be a new world - exotic beyond anything we've experienced so far. We will spend more than a month there, and ride over 6,000 miles, covering territory that few tourists ever see, plus the big highlights, so stay tuned!
