Tour day 2

Most of the second day of our tour was taken up with driving. Mongolia has very little transport infrastructure, with metalled roads running only between the very few major towns. The rest of the network is made up of tracks which are less actual roads than traces of the more popular decisions of how to get from one bridge, ford or pass to the next. Often three or more tracks will lead to the same place and it is down to the foresight and experience of the driver to know which is likely to be passable by their particular vehicle
Mongolia is the Land of the Toyota, this marque making up at least half of all cars we saw. Of these the Land Cruiser and Prius dominate and it was in the former that we travelled through beautiful and very bumpy landscape. One of course would not expect to see a Prius on these dirt tracks, which only goes to prove how expectations can be confounded. In fact there were a number of Prius, as well as other "town cars" , covered in dust and mud, extracting themselves from ruts and fording rivers at the most unlikely depths. Watching hybrids being driven through a river up to their exhaust pipes and then mount the bank, spraying mud all over the windows and white bodywork gave me a profound insight into how this nation of nomadic tribes conquered half the world. They remain completely dauntless.
We spent hours driving through the most beautiful scenery; plains strewn with boulders, hills, valleys, rivers and streams. Yaks, cows and horses roamed free and everywhere gers. Though the life of the nomadic herder is without doubt hard I envy the lack of regulation, a Mongolian citizen has the right to pitch their ger wheresoever they please. Since the terrible weather of 2007 when around a third of the country's livestock was lost to famine this has led to enormous ger shanties in the capital, but when faced with the sight of those who remain it is difficult to temper romanticism.
By late afternoon we were in the Orkhon valley, with a lightning storm coming in. Photos cannot do it justice, it was magnificent. The only downside being the inability to fully close the roof. We had the same problem the previous night and the sooner someone introduces flexible roof flashings to Mongolia the better.Read more