Mongolia...

Our Last morning in Kosh Agash,,, the clouds have gathered and spit small drops of rain at the wind screen; the road is a straight and direct 50 or so kilometers to the border...As we drive out of this dusty ramsahckle town, I have a feeling of liberation... Whether it is because we are finally going to be in Mongolia after all these years of conspiring, or from the contrast of being in this town, compared to our previous days spent in a remote wilderness; either way , to be leaving and heading somewhere new feels good.

The Altai Mountains peer down on us from all sides, a 360 degree panorama of vastness that makes you feel like you are in a gigantic crater. I've known for the past two weeks that beyond one stretch of these mountains lies the ancient land that we are now heading to; they have stood like the final challenge and last rite of passage through to another lifetime and another century.

We start climbing out of the valley and come to the Russian border post of Tashanta.
Even the gaurds and officials here know that they are at the far end of the World and they don't kick up any fuss at all about letting us out of their country and into the wilderness beyond. It is an abrupt change of everything. With the last tarmac, so dissappears all traces of the civilised minds that gave it purpose. A twisting dirt track makes its way up hill and defines the most trodden path into the wilderness beyond. 20km further and an all together out-of-the-ordinary sight appears; it is the Mongolian official border post. In the middle of a wide open expanse, steep slopes curvaciously reaching up from long grassy valleys; lies nestled inbetween the nothingness; a big white concrete building surrounded by locked fences, cameras, and radar dishes. The road 30m before it becomes paved and fenced either side too. We are channeled into this place like sand through an hour glass, yet on the other side is no capturing and enclosed vase, but even more open unfenced wide expanse of land. It feels suddenly bizzare, to be filtered and processed for the purpose of control and organisation by minds that are dwarfed in the immensity of this land.

It all makes perfect sense right now, that these endless horizons have been the home to wanderers for countless centuries past. Who could ever settle in the middle of such a place where everywhere you stop to look about you, the middle of it all seems a distant view away.

So, we are squeezed out of Siberia and pop into the long and endless falling of being in Mongolia. Plop,,, whooooosh... Just the small matter of paying 12 euro road tax first, to a pot bellied Kazakh with an enormous handlebar moustache, and we are on our way to Bayan Ulgii. We bump and clatter along over the rocky and earthy terrain, following the squiggles of previous tyres that wiggled their way to where we now head to. In some places the tracks multiply infront of us, all intertwining and coursing away to re-join eachother where the common eye regarded this way of passing to be the best and least bumpy.

Its not long before we stop to say hi to an old man riding his very tired and undersized looking horse. He asks us where we are going, and fortunately for us he points us back in the direction we came in and puts us on the right track. Somehow we managed to miss our junction a few kilometers back and I'm left with a feeling of a complete reality check. This is no place to take anything for granted, to wander aimlessly or just course with the wind. Here one must understand the Nature, be awake and aware, watch for the signs and know when the wind is your friend or your foe. We could easily have driven on for hundreds of kilometers into open country not knowing when or where our path would bring us to others. Maybe we would have broken down or run out of fuel, being far away from the assistence of others. Awareness is an essential key to surviving here, with the ability and sense to do it too. From that moment on our map, as frugal as its features were, was to be regularly addressed, and every possible chance to confirm from a local source was taken, their pointers taken as gospel.

We thanked the old man, and as a precaution i checked the rear wheels of the truck for any loose nuts and bolts. I could'nt believe it. Again on the same wheel, there were two bolts sheered off and a third rattling around loose in its hole. I reckoned on being about 100 kilometers from Bayan Ulgii, too far to risk driving all that way on these tracks with three of the eight locking bolts unnefectively holding our wheel on. There was a small village close to where we missed our turn towards Ulgii, maybe we could find a solution to our problem there.