Russian & Mongolia Border

Well where do we start with the fun and games of crossing into Mongolia. The Russian side of the border was nice and easy, all the forms were in English and the processors all were fluent, which meant the crossing took all of 45mins.

Then we drove the 20km to the Mongolian border control, when we arrived we had to fill in the usual torrent of forms including medical declarations, and hand over our passports etc...

Once we got through that stage we were told to drive our car into a holding area, there another 20 rally cars were waiting. As it turns out to import a car into Mongolia traditionally there'd be import tax circa $2000. In previous years, this tax has been levied to allow the rally cars to be donated to the charities. As we got to the border they were asking for the $2000 tax. Now obviously we weren't willing to pay that, seeing as we raised over £1500 for Mongolian charities, and are going to donate the cars to the charities. So we waited....and waited.....and waited some more. Our line of communication was via text message from the rally organisers, so was rather limited, essentially we were waiting for the Mongolian finance minister to sign us off on the tax levy. So this involved our cars being kept together in a fenced in paddock, and we were then forced to camp in the adjacent field. This field was technically Mongolian soil, because we were allowed entry to Mongolia, just our cars were not. There was a little shop in the village next to the border crossing, so we walked there and picked up supplies, including some Russian beer. This "shop" had dirt floors and at one end of the room several shelves full of various alcohols, chocolate bars and other junk food. The most interesting thing about it however was the freshly chopped off goats head & legs that greeted you on the floor, along with it's organs hanging from the hook on the wall. Strangely none of were phased by this anymore, and afte having one decent meal a day for the last 2 weeks, we even asked how much to cook it for us, unfortunately the owner wouldn't as it was for him family that week. Needless to say he had had a roaring trade the last few days, and everytime we turned up he had a massive grin on his face!

The camping that night was by far the coldest I'd ever experienced. I slept fully clothed by still my legs shook like mad with the cold.

The next morning, we were for some reason all stopped from exiting the border and going to the shop by foot, this lead to some general tensions and after a few more phonecalls to the British Embassy, we were only slightly more in the loop.

Then after about 30hours waiting, we were called up at about 6pm that evening. Ourselves and 2 other teams were free!

We made our way to the nearest town and this made for an interesting journey.

The scenery all around us was mountains, and the road was a rubble track, this lead to an extremely bumpy journey. With the lack of main roads we decided that we'd be just as well off driving cross country, see we got the bearing for the next town and used our compasses, this lead us over some interesting terrain, and eventually up a mountain. Getting up the mountain was a struggle, I had the car in 1st gear and even with my foot to the floor it was struggling not to stall, just when were about to lose all our momentum, we made it to the peak! The views were amazing, because the sun was setting over the surrounding mountains.

The journey downward was alot easier than heading up, but still riddled with rocks and boulders, the majority of time the car had one side riding the bank of the road.

As the sun set, the darkness took hold and we were seriously thinking of bedding down, rather than making it to the town which was still 30km away. We then headed towards the eletricity poles which should have run along the "main road", when we got closer there was a 8ft high bank which lead up to the road, the first car in the convoy, took a fast run at it and almost made it, they then tried a little further along where it was slightly lower and made it, we then followed, and to our absolute amazment the road at the top was smooth and more importantly tarmac'd! It was only then 15mins drive to the town.

We turned up at a place that supposedly had Mongolian gurs to rent (like a teepee), as it turned out there were, and at $5 a night the beds were awesome!

One of the owners children showed us to a restaurant, where we each had a lamb and noodle soup, and a couple of dumplings with a stack of white bread and a beer, all for the princely sum of £2 each. After that lovely meal we all had the best sleep we'd had for some time back at the gur.