It had rained gently in the night. I still walked out,
even though it was spitting a little.
We
drove through a small village (Tosontsengel) that had a big old
unloved building. The road then became very bad and we had
impressions of our good orange road of 80km/h down to 20. But soon
after cresting the hill realized that the new road by passed the town
and we had missed the turn off.
Again filled with water but with a hose and were charged 1000mnt for it about A$0.50
We
were heading into the lake Khar Nuur as on the map it is surrounded
by sand dunes.
We
had a few choices of how to get there but one was taken from us as we realized that the sealed road headed off south instead of continuing
west as our map indicated. The road to join the westerly road was
blocked off.
Heading south, John decided that if there was a track up a certain valley it
would be a good short cut. There was, so we took it. It followed his
pins he had put on the map and we popped out on the road on our map.
Sadly the unmapped road was of a faster variety than the mapped one.
We
took many unmapped roads on this day. Most of them were good
choices and saved us mileage. One however put us one the wrong side
of a river and it wasn’t till close to the lake we found a road to
take us to the river. A wide very shallow river to cross. We only needed to
back track 2 km to get back on track and drive down the other side of
a ridge.
We
had seen the occasional corral but no livestock. May be this is where
the first few months of spring/summer were farmed.
It felt a little remote here, we must of traveled for a few hours without seeing a yurt, people or livestock
As
we closed the lake we saw more animals and yurts.
Finally
found sand with fresh water at its base. A really neat view so
different to Australian desserts we had been in.
Finally
drove through the dunes to the lake and yes more yurts, and
associated herds. We had had a great days drive. Most of the off map
roads we travelled enabled us to average 50km/h. Others were slow but
nice just choosing roads that headed in the correct direction,
reminded us of our trip through the Atacama desert in Northern
Chile.
251km Camp site 1979m alt.
251km Camp site 1979m alt.