Altaj to Bajanhongo

Well the last 2 days have been pretty eventful! Where do I start....we woke up pretty early because the roof rack had to be rethought out, due to the bumps in the road shaking it loose every 100km or so, but when we started emptying the roof rack we noticed the smell of petrol, when we looked under the car, it was clear the fuel tank was not the nice normal shape it was at the start of the rally, now it had a good three large dents in it, and unfortunately a small hole which was dripping our fuel everywhere. This was the nightmare we'd worried about, after hearing about it ending so many other previous peoples rallies, so we jacked up the car, and tried using some petrol patching material which is basically a piece of cloth that is then dunked in this grey glue type stuff, and you massage it over the hole to try and block it. After leaving it an hour we set off for the next days driving. We set off from Altaj and the roads showed no signs of getting better, the landscape however kept changing as we meandered our way though the terrain. From grasslands to desert to mountains, with that and the roads being as bad as they were, we were definately kept on our toes.

My teammate was driving the car, and as we were going along a relatively smooth piece of road he managed to get it up to the almighty speed of 40mph, unfortunately as we were going along, there was a sharp dip in the road followed by another dip quickly afterwards, because the car hadn't recovered from the first dip, as we hit the second the car was launched upwards, for what felt like a couple of seconds we were all floating in the car off our seats, thn came the crash as the car landed back to the ground, and the roof rack came sliding off the roof and down the front of the car scattering it's contents everywhere. The damage luckily was only a large scrape on the bonnet, and a slightly bent roof rack. Once we went back to check on the skid marks you could see that the cars front wheels had touched down about 16 foot from the second dip. On a proper timetrialed rally, that jump could have looked amazing, and we were lucky that the car was in one piece, after about 20minutes we were ready to rock and roll, with the roof rack still in one piece.

As we drove onwards, the leak in the fuel tank got worse and we decided to stop off in the next village to try and get a local mechanic to try and weld it. The next village luckily did have a mechanic but he didn't have a welder, instead he had something called abro-steel, it's a kind of metal putty that hardens after you mix two compounds. We thought it could harm and at £7.50 wasn't going to break the bank. The mechic used a pulley system an a cambelt to hoist the car up and then got to work, as he was playing with the car we stepped out of his yard and all the local kids who'd noticed us playing with a football came over, and as usual, they wouldn't steal anything, but would be so inquizative that they'd ask to look through the cars etc. After about an hour the car was ready to roll again, and we were out of pens, sweets and stickers to give the kids. The tank seamed to hold up for a while, but then the leak started again, but luckily only a little drip opposed to the trickle we had before.

We ended up camping that night in the north of the Gobi desert, it was completely flat and with no clouds it was amazing to see the stars so brightly, we even saw a couple of shooting stars. Just before the sun set we all hit a few golf balls across the desert as I'd brought bag full for such occassions, which was good fun.

It was a mixed day with highs and lows, and more than a few arguements, but by the end of it we were alot happier that we'd met alot of the locals and had our first mishap but the car stood all the tests the rally threw at us so far.

The next morning we woke up early to get photos of the sunset, which was pretty cool, as it came up over the desert. We were all pretty tired already, but we got up and started off for the day, and with the goal of getting to Bajanhongo, which was the next major town after Altaj.

As we were going, around lunchtime we came to a river, quite a wide river in fact, it only came up to our knees, but with the cars would die before making it to the otherside. After speaking to a local, he tried to explain that it got alot narrower 1km down stream, then he jumped on his motorbike and showed us where. When we got there we realised that the air intake was still to low to go through the water, so we opened the bonnet, twisted the intake upwards, and attached a 2 foot of metal flexi-duct to the end so it acted like a snorkel for the car, this then sat on the windscreen and seeing as I was the one driving the others had the fun job of pushing the car off from the mud, so it was a case of putting it in first gear and revving the hell out of the engine so no water went up the exhaust pipe. Luckily I made it across without any issues, and the engine purred afterwards. 2 of the other cars in the convoy also made it across, but the Suzuki Jimny had some issues, because the bow wave of the water pushed it through the bonnet and into their air intake, after some airing out and drying of their filter it was up and going again. Whilst that was happening another gang of kids decided to invade the cars and join us playing with the football and rugby balls we brought.

When we finally made it to Bajanhongo we decided to find another mechanic and see if they could weld the fuel tank, as it was still leaking. One of the locals hopped in the car and lead us to a mechanic, who seamed to understand what we were trying to explain, after about 10mins of overjealous hand gestures we'd agreed a price and he set to work. He took about an hour removing the fuel tank, then got to work welding the tank with an arc welder, he didn't even use a welding mask so he's probably half blind already, but after another hour he'd patched it up and then added more of the abrosteel for good measure.

The fun part came about when he went to fix it back onto the car. He'd managed to rip one of the fuel filter pipes, so had to use some other pipe as a substitute, but whilst doing this his young assistant thought it'd be funny to try an scare the mechanic, by slightly lowering the trolley jack that was holding the car up. Only problem was that he lowered it fully, so we were all sat some 15ft away, heard a scream of the mechanic as the car was lowered on him, we ran and tried lifting the car up so the assistant could re-raise the jack, luckily it worked and he raised the car back up and the mechanic who was most likely a but shook up, just kept on working with no serious injuries.

Once it was all done we paid up the equivelent of £15 and set off on our way. We drove about 30km out of town to pitch up in the mountains for the night. Whilst on our way there a couple of guys got chatting to us all whilst we were waiting at a toll road. They were telling us to watch out for snakes in the long grasses etc... They even offered to take us hunting with them for dinner. We made our excuses and left as we were all tired after a long day. Then the two guys who both seamed a little on edge started racing and cutting off one of the other cars, trying to get them of the road, as the other car caught up with us, they drove in front of our car and handbreaked the car into our way, after we slammed on the brakes and almost hit them they jumped out and started demanding that we drank some whisky with them, but seeing that we were very tired and driving it wouldn't have made a good mix, so a little worried after trying to get away and them both putting their fingers to their throats in a slitting motion, we got away and they didn't try to follow or anything.

We ended up pitching our tents on the side of a mountain and having some of our army ration packs for dinner.

All in all an interesting couple of days!