22nd July

We rode all day among the lovely twisties of the Altai mountains. Hundreds of kms of stunning scenery. Along the way we met a crew from Australia who had just come out of Mongolia. One of them, named Cain, was on a KTM 990Adv. I had a good chat with him about his route through and he recommended that instead of the oft taken northern and southern routes, we have a crack at the middle route. I liked the sound of it, for he too, unlike his crew, was a dirt man.

There were so many photo stops that it took us a while to make progress. However, we did and later that evening, we pulled off by a river in a green field near the road. After we got established, Toumas and I set about getting firewood so that we might get some atmosphere going tonight. We both went off in different directions, and in the woods that I went to, I heard these very distressed yelps and groans from some kind of animal. Owing to how loud they were, I knew this wasn’t going to be a guinea pig. In fact, I wondered if here be a monster. I crept into the stoney and tree enclosed enclave and found a horse on its back. Was it giving birth or dying? I took some video of the situation but will put them up at the end.

Gesa and I went back 2 hours later and it was dead. Quite a morbid end to the night, made worse by the fact that we heard the baying of wolves or wild dogs who had clearly found their next meal. Gesa barely slept. I too didn’t sleep much, but mainly because Pawel had sent me a text saying that the Russian/Mongolian border had been closed for 3 days over the weekend because of a festival in Mongolia. Was he joking me??

So in case you are really bored of those sequences, we stopped and pondered the map of Mongolia for a few minutes, in anticipation of the wonders what await us.