123.5 hours of sitting and 7 aimags

Three weeks ago, I began a ridiculously long journey to the westernmost aimag (province) of Mongolia for my friend's sports camp - more on that later. Due to some unfortunate circumstances, I ended up doing the entire trip on my own. I consider the trip to be a success, but it certainly wasn't without its own set of fiascoes.

the major cities along my route - click to make bigger

Stage 1: from my soum to Ulaanbaatar (7.5 hours)
Like I do every time I go in to UB, I called the taxi I intended to take the night before and told him that I was going to Erdenet and would he please pick me up. He said that was fine and that was that. Except when the next morning rolled around, I found myself standing on a wood pile in the middle of my yard an hour after I should have been picked up after finding out that my taxi wasn't going after all, desperately looking for any other taxi driving around and calling all other taxis that my hashaa family knew about. We caught one just before it left the area of cell service and he was nice enough to come back and get me. I made it into UB with no major issues (the buses weren't leaving for some reason so I took a van down) and booked my ticket to Bayan-Olgii.

Stage 2: from Ulaanbaatar to Olgii, Bayan-Olgii (61 hours)
Since I had gotten my ticket to Olgii a couple days in advance, I decided to not leave as early as usual for the bus station. That turned out to be a terrible idea because my taxi driver barely bumped another driver who was not only wearing headphones while driving but insisted on getting the traffic police involved. Seeing the time tick down closer and closer to my departure time, I got out and flagged a new taxi, getting to the bus station 20 minutes before the time my ticket said to leave. Then, of course, everyone going on the two buses to Olgii sat around for two hours basically doing nothing until we were finally allowed to leave.

The first night on the bus, I woke up to a snow-covered landscape at 4am, shivering because the drivers decided to blast music all night rather than put the heat on. They rectified that mistake for the remaining two days of the trip, although keeping the heat on all day and night when it was over 80 degrees out during the day was not an ideal situation.

waking up to snow in May

I'm pretty sure my tailbone was bruised by the end of the 61 hours because of an unfortunate decision made by whoever owns the bus. The bus was originally designed with a handicap section so there was a lot of extra leg room in the front of the bus. This is, of course, a waste of space when you can get an extra 80,000 tugrugs per ticket (around $60) if an extra row is put in this flagrantly useless area. Being the lucky person that I am, I ended up in one of these inserted seats which were essentially wooden chairs with pieces of fabric placed on them - not the idea place to sit for three days without paved roads.

my ride

The highlight of the trip, paradox as it is, was the tendency of the bus to break down. In Mongolia, vehicles are used until it'd be time to get a new one, then they're used for at least another 10 years. This bus was well past its expiration date, but was the choice for a trip of over 1600km (1000 miles). While I didn't enjoy the actual breakdown because it meant that much more time added to my trip, how we got out of them was fantastic. First, there would be the collective groan when we realized why we had stopped. Then all of the menfolk would dutifully pile off the bus and position themselves around it. While the driver tried turning over the engine, the men would be rocking the bus trying to push it into motion. Once they were successful, the driver would start driving because he was afraid to stop to let the men come back on. This meant that all the men would be running alongside the bus until they could reach the door and jump on. We women played our part too - we'd yell encouraging things like "run!" "fast!" and "better hurry!" while the men were running after the bus. Helpful, I know.

the menfolk doing their duty - pushing the bus

mysteriously stopped in the Khovd countryside for 4 hours

Around 1am on the third night, we came into cell service. Knowing that we were due to reach Olgii at any time, I asked the people around me where we were and if we'd be arriving in the city any time soon. I was assured that we were only 9km out and that we'd reach Olgii soon. After conveying that information to my friend, I apparently fell back asleep, only to be awoken by another breakdown of the bus. It was around 3am and we were still driving - clearly nowhere near the city. When we finally arrived around 5am, I called to let my friend know I had actually arrived. Apparently she didn't get my original text until 4am and had wandered the streets of Olgii because my phone wasn't connecting, looking for a lost American whose phone had died and couldn't find the other Americans. Adventures.

Stage 3: from Olgii to Khovd, Hovd (7 hours)
After the 61 hour bus adventure, I decided that there was no way that I was ever EVER doing that again. Since I knew the one PCV in Khovd who hadn't left for the summer, I decided to at least break up the journey a little bit and set off for Khovd.  The jeep driver called me two hours earlier than he said he would and I was really excited for that early start. I was the fourth one in the jeep which meant that we were waiting for one more. So we waited...and waited...and waited. For two hours we sat in a jeep in Olgii waiting for the last passenger to show up. When he finally arrived, he came bearing the stench of alcohol and 6 more beers to drink on the way. A very nice Kazakh man put himself between me and the drunk man and after we dropped him off somewhere in the countryside with his friend (after our second flat tire), my fellow passengers told me he was a bad man - agreed.

In Khovd I mainly explored the town and played in the river. Last year was an important year for the city so they painted all the buildings on main streets bright colors. It's been a year so the colors have faded, but it's still a nice relief from all of the sand everywhere. There is also an amusement park in the city (!!!) with a rollercoaster (!!!) that we went to one night. I had a near-death experience from Mongolians who decided to cut in line and push as many people into the small waiting area designed to form an orderly line before getting on the ride. After being open for less than a week, the guide-rails had been broken from the crush of so many people and many bars were broken off so people could cut in line easier. I hope no Mongolians ever try to go to an amusement park in the US because they'll end up starting a lot of fights.

the brightly colored theater in town

view of the city from the river

Stage 4: from Khovd to Uliastai, Zavkhan (22 hours)
When I decided to skip UB and try to get directly to Erdenet instead, that decision involved getting from Khovd to the difficult-to-reach aimag of Zavkhan. It's doable from Khovd, but definitely a challenge because there's no real road between them. The first van told me he was leaving at 3am (not likely in this country) and gave me the wrong phone number so we couldn't even have a Mongolian double check - clearly he did not want me getting to Zavkhan. The second day in Khovd, nobody was going anywhere - the bus to UB was full and the only place drivers were going was Olgii - not helpful. The third day, I lucked out. A driver was willing to talk to me and booked me on a seat in his van.

It took awhile to get going, but we finally left Khovd around 8pm. The ride was great until around 11am. My headphones broke so I was alternating between just staring out the window and dozing off when we stopped moving. The engine was overheating (I think) and we had nothing to cool it down. The driver asked everyone for water, but there was only about 2L to be had. He asked to use my bottle but since I had put a drink mix in it, I told him that probably wasn't a good idea. Unfortunately, the mix left the water mostly clear so he requisitioned the water and poured it in the engine. Shockingly enough, that only made things worse. So from 11am to 5pm, we drove little spurts down the remaining 100km to Zavkhan but mainly just sat in the middle of nowehere. We were trying to get somewhere with cell service so someone could come help us. Eventually someone rode up on a motorcycle with a large jug of water and a replacement part and we were on our way. 22 hours and 400km later, I was in Uliastai.

the "road" to Uliastai

When I got to Uliastai, I saw the main tourist site in town - 108 stupas on a hill with a Buddhist temple. Along with some very tasty food made by the PCVs I stayed with, it was a nice stop on my way home.

108 stupas and temple

view of Uliastai from the stupas

Stage 5: from Uliastai to Erdenet (26 hours)
Trying to get a ride from Uliastai to Erdenet was also challenging. We all knew it could be done since we had all seen the vans saying that they made the trip in both Erdenet and Uliastai, but since it's not a popular trip, it took longer to arrange than we thought. For the first two days, there was nothing. After being defeated the second day, we were walking away from the market when a van came up to us and asked if we wanted to go to Erdenet. We could see the visible disappointment when we said that only one of the 4 of us was going, but I successfully arranged a ride to Erdenet. Unfortunately they weren't leaving until the next day so I was there for longer than I intended, but it was nice being there.

Then the ride to Erdenet itself was mostly uneventful. Nothing was wrong with the van. My seat was comfortable. There were no random stops - only twice for food and a few well-timed bathroom stops. The definite downside to the trip was that there were 4 toddlers sitting around me - all of which screamed, cried, and vomited at least once during the drive. I got into Erdenet too late to catch a taxi home, but that's my plan now. Finally, homeward bound.

There are more pictures posted on Facebook and the post about Olgii and the sports camp itself will come the next time I have internet.