Western Mongolia

One thing we forgot to mention on our last message: we are travelling on our own again. Right after the Gobi desert we took a western route while Elise & Mat (our French friends with the BJ75) remained in the center for a few more days.
So since that time we did a lot of driving on bad dirt tracks, mountains, into river, National Parks etc…
On our way to Western Mongolia we first reached the town of Altai about which we have nothing special to report but where we bought lots of water and some food for the long travel to come. We also decided to take some forces and have a good dinner in a (too) local little restaurant. This ended up being a bad mistake since it kept us rather uncomfortable for at least a week after…
Further west we stopped in a very small village that began with a small but very nice Buddhist Monastery. There we met the Lama and we decided to give him one of the book that we are distributing to people about Health in Mongolia and a few packs of color pencils for kids. The temple is visited by lots of people from the village so we hope it will be useful to as many of them as possible. The Lama was really happy and to thank us for this little present he recited (sang) a quite long Tibetan prayer while burning incense around us. It was an incredible moment, full of spirituality and from this we should be protected from many bad things now (unfortunately it did not do any good to our refrigerator so far)!
Further on the road we passed the town of Khovd where more shopping was necessary before we could reach Olgiy, a turning point in this part of the country. Food is rather difficult to find in this part of the country and the few super market that we can find rarely sell what we look for like fresh vegetables and meat (..and we are running out of Nutella!!) so for about two weeks we mainly survived on rice, pasta, some potatoes and Chinese noodles. Most people live in ger there (large rounded and nicely decorated tents that grow like mushrooms in the mountains) and they produce what they need, principally meat from goats, cows and sheep and dairy product that they prepare themselves. We tried some cheese… but not much… let’s say that it’s rather strong, sawer and it’s difficult to get rid of the taste of it after.
Anyway, in Olgiy we lost a little bit of time to get some border permits necessary to reach and visit Altai Tavaan Bogd (the Western most National Park of Mongolia) that makes the frontier with China. When all our documents were stamped properly we drove for another day across beautiful valleys following rivers and reaching high plateaus before we could reach the park. It was strange to see the contrast between the desertic, rocky landscape and some valley bottom covered by green carpet of soft grass and trees where yacks and cows are fattening happily.
On the way I didn’t miss the opportunity to try the fishing rod and lures that I bought with Christophe (my brother in Law) prior the trip and it worked great. So from then on I started fishing regularly with this rule: Henri catches the fish and Erica uses her professional skills of Antarctic fish scalper to clean it and put it in the pan!! We cook the fish directly in the frying pan with just a bit of butter and salt and everybody should at least eat it like this, it is really excellent! Christophe, you should come here someday, you would love it, it’s a fisherman’s paradise!
Altai Tavaan Bogd is also a great place for birding and birds like Eversman’s Redstart and Red-flanked Bluetails can be seen in the forest all around the beautiful lakes. Mountains are also very impressive (the park has the highest mountain in Mongolia), and the best way to really discover it is from the back of a horse. So we did one day of horseback riding to reach some waterfalls close to the China border. It was really great but after a while the small little Kazakh seats started to be far less comfortable that the ones on which we ride on in Europe. Believe us, it became a real relief to get off from the horse after a 7 hour trip in the mountains (especially for Erica for who it was the first horseback riding experience ever)!
After 3 days in the park we took the long track around a lake to go back to Olgiy. This track was obviously much less used than other; 4WD was necessary most of the time and we had to cross two rivers in order to reach the main track. It is quite stressful at first but we quickly get use to it and learn to trust our Land Cruiser abilities.
Passed Olgiy again we took the direction of lake Achit Nuur and Uureg Nuur (further north) which gave us more and more stunning views of the so particular Mongolian Landscape.
Time was running fast though and it was already time to go back west to reach the Russian border before the end of our Mongolian visa. The way was not so easy again as more river and swampy areas had to be crossed (this mend again crossing the river with my underwear and jacket for a good look of the terrain) in order to reach Tsaangnuur (the international check point). This small town was rather depressing because it is mostly composed of ex-soviet buildings in really bad shape and at the same time it was the last look that we could have from Mongolia that we loved so much.
Passing both frontier was really easy we have to say, in about 4 hours all the formalities were done (this is the fastest we’ve done so far). Then, after five weeks of shaking on bad gravel or dirt tracks we could miraculously put our wheels on a real paved road and drive in a relative silence and comfort.
It was a good feeling to be back in Russia where for some reason we felt like home again. Our Russian is coming back quickly and we just loved to enter in the first supermarket to rush on all those little things that just don’t exist in Mongolia (ICE CREAM!!!).
The Russian Altai is really gorgeous and we were amazed by the landscape at every turn of the road. Here, before Kazakhstan, we decided to take a few days more relaxed and the great weather was a delight with the scenery of the high mountains. Our first morning was particularly nice along a lake in the high alpine environment, with forest around us, warming coffee on our camp stove, a nutcracker calling on the pine trees close by and Stanley Brinks playing on our car player…
At the moment we reached Barnaul, a nice city where we need to fill up our diesel tank, get more food, a new air chamber (just in case) and if we are lucky we could find a new door holders (the ones from the back door suffered severely on the Mongolian roads).
Next time you’ll hear from is should be from somewhere in Kazakhstan (probably from Almaty in a couple of weeks) so until then, be all good and see you there!

PS: Salut à Ben & Nicou (deux cyclistes Français) ainsi qu'Aude et Brice (qui voyagent en camion avec leurs deux enfants)! Rencontres bien sympas, bonne continuation à vous!