Wednesday, 12 August 2009

Hovd to Altaj

The second day of Mongolian driving, well for some reason Geography has conspired against us, and as a result, it happens that August is the wettest month of the year!

So this turns the excitement of avoiding huge stones/rocks, cliff edges, pot holes, rivers, "puddles" and any livestock that happen to wonder in your way; into even more fun, considering that you now have limited vision out of the windscreen, and you add the challenge of sliding across the road, as the back of the car keeps trying to kick out and spin you around!

This lead to many more water crossings throughout the day. Then around lunchtime the rain subsided, and then the Suzuki swift that was convoying with us which was about 10 meters in front of us, managed to do a dukes of hazard style jump over what we first thought was a small hill, as it turned out it was a nastily long drop on the other side, especially if you're going at 40mph, they lost their rear bumper as they landed, but otherwise appeared to be ok.

We trouped onwards towards Altaj, and the day was a long one, we eventually rocked up very late, and seeing as it was dark the navigating to find a hotel of some sort was a nightmare, especially seeing that we were all so tired, we found a hotel as described in a lonely planet guide one of the other teams had, and after some negotitions we all managed to get some shut eye.

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