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Going home

mars - desember 2019
An epic journey from Australia to Germany by car Les mer
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  • Going home

    One day in a nomad's life

    14. juni 2019, Russland ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    The day to day life as an Overlander is not always super exiting and there’s a lot of routine daily chores. Hence, I wanted to describe how a regular day so far looks like for us.

    1. Waking up around 6:30
    2. Tom crawls down from the roof and stars making coffee. The setup now is a hand grinder, the Bialetti coffee maker and the Cola can burner with white gas
    3. Jo turns Hans from bedroom to living room
    4. Yoga
    5. Breakfast: depending on the temperature either Muesli, porridge or bread
    6. Planning where we’re headed on that day
    7. Fixing stuff if something’s broken and checking that the car’s alright
    8. Filter drinking water from the next source of water. Current setup is a 0.1 um filter for big stuff and bacteria plus a charcoal filter for heavy metals
    9. Turning Hans from a living room into a car
    10. Driving for a few hours
    11. Every third day we’re shopping for groceries. Oats, rice and lentils are big on the menu.
    12. Looking for a nice spot to stay for the rest of the day
    13. Turning Hans into a living room
    14. Cooking dinner. Preferably on a camp fire to save up fuel, otherwise we use our Coleman dual fuel stove
    15. Washing up and putting everything back where it belongs
    16. Have a beer around the camp fire
    17. Turn Hans into a bedroom
    18. Go to bed around 10pm for an episode of whichever show we’re hooked on at the moment
    19. Sleep and repeat    Les mer

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  • Going home

    25h in Ulan-Ude

    19. juni 2019, Russland ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

    City time again. After having spent another night with the wonderful Kudlik family (fellow Overlanders, also on their way back to Europe, but started in Sydney) about 50kms South of Ulan-ude at the Selenga river, we drive into Ulan-ude to get some chores done:
    1. Grocery shopping
    2. Hardware store for an additional water filter solution (the possible pesticides and heavy metals drive us a bit mad)
    3. Car service (that Tom largely did himself)
    4. Car wash (you cannot imagine how many insects there were on our windshield)
    5. Laundry
    6. Water
    7. Café with WiFi for TV series and new music

    It was a bit optimistic to think we'll get all of this done in a few hours... But we're super successful nevertheless. We find a water pump, a bjToyota car dealer to get the spare parts, a supermarket to do the shopping, a garage where Tom can do the service and they only did the oil change, the laundry service to get our clothes clean in the meantime and a car wash station. And after all this it's 6.30pm and I have no motivation whatsoever to keep on driving. Hence we make our way up the hill to the monastery (it has a big carpark) and set up camp there. Once again, we picked a spot popular with young couples making out in their cars (the view must be quite stimulating). Families and tourists come up as well and we end up meeting quite a few curious souls. Maybe we inspire some of them to travel, too? I'd love to think so.
    Full of happiness due to our successful day and lovely conversations, we go to bed, leaving the cafe bit to the next day.
    Great choice as this means we have delicious "syrniki"( baked cottage cheese balls), a croissant, coffee and some fresh grapefruit and rosemary tea for breakfast and even manage to squeeze in some sightseeing including Lenin's head and a dancing fountain paired with classical music.
    Ulan-ude will stay a pleasant memory.    Les mer

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  • Going home

    Eating in Russia

    21. juni 2019, Russland ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    Russian food positively surprised us. The variety of goods in supermarkets is great, only local fruit seemed to be hard to come by (probably due to the climate). Vegetarian or vegan options in restaurants were space but they existed. And the soups were ALWAYS super tasty. Since we have Hans back, we anyways prepare our meals ourselves most of the time. Here are a few culinary highlights:

    Stolovaya - a canteen serving home cooked meals for a fair (for European standard cheap) price. If we did eat out, this was often our choice of restaurant. There is bread, various salads, at least one soup (often borscht, a beetroot based soup), your choice of carbs (pasta, rice, pilav etc.), Meat dishes, sometimes a vegetarian stew and dessert. Not to forget tea (sometimes even with fresh herbs and berries). Perfect for us as we could simply point to our preferred choice.

    Campfires- having Hans back and camping wild again meant lots of campfires. Tom went back to baking bread, we cooked stews, fried eggs and much much more.

    Dumplings- Russians seem to be quite fond of dumplings. While they're often filled with meat, we found vegetarian ones filled with mashed potatoes. Quite delicious! And available by the kg in the supermarkets' freezer. (We simply boiled them and added a bit of soy sauce for convenience. Saw them being served fried once, surely a better way to enjoy them.)

    Kvass- a traditional fermented drink made from rye bread. It's sold by street vendors everywhere and can be bought by the glass or bottle. We tried it once and it tasted like slightly alfcoholic grape juice (alcohol content is between .5-1%). I think you could get used to it, but it definitely has a strange taste.

    Brotzeit -Tom has been particularly happy about the cheese and salami selection in Russian supermarkets. As the weather was quite hot, we had "Brotzeit" for lunch and/or dinner fairly often. Bread, cheese, salami, pickles and for the vegan option mustard, kren, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots and a vegan veggie spread that probably was supposed to be sauce but tasted delicious. Every once in a while we also treated ourselves to a piece of smoked fish. So delicious!    Les mer

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  • Going home

    Driving in East Russia

    23. juni 2019, Russland ⋅ ☁️ 21 °C

    So after a good 3700 km on Russian streets I thought I’ll leave a comment about what it’s like to drive a Troopy through East Russia. After we left the traffic insanity of Vladivostok we had 3700km of Russian highway to Ulan Ude ahead of us. Here’s what I found:

    - a two lane street is really a three lane street if someone wants to overtake

    - Everybody adds 10km/h to the speed limit. Unless it’s a construction site, than they go double the limit

    - Street conditions can go from German Autobahn to “should we switch to 4WD” without any warning

    - If you turn of the highway almost all of the streets are gravel road and sometimes rivers (literally!)

    - At gas stations you have to pay before you fill up. If you overestimated you get money back

    - An oil change is just under 6 euros!!

    - It’s so easy to find great spots to camp just a few kms off the highway and it usually includes a little adventure. Yes, we got stuck on mud! Badly. But the Maxtrax saved us in the end.

    - From time to time you have to stop for cows crossing the street. But at least they are using the pedestrian crossing!

    - Traffic lights either count down or blink before changing which is great!

    - Deadly accident sights are marked with plastic flowers on the road side, same as the ones on grave yards. (There were quite a few)

    - The Amur highway connecting western ad eastern Russia has only been paved since 2004. (After driving it himself Vladimir Putin said: It’s not the Autobahn but it’s alright)

    Stats:
    Distance: 3700km
    Diesel: 518 l
    Consumption: 12.1l/100km
    One full service at 398000km
    No police stop

    We had a great time driving in Russia! We met lots of interesting people on and off the road and really appreciated the hospitality!    Les mer

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  • Going home

    Crossing the Russian-Mongolian border

    24. juni 2019, Russland ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C

    After three weeks in Russia, it's time to move on. We're about to cross the border to Mongolia. Feelings are mixed. Part of us is actually sad to leave Russia already. We just got used to it. We sort of knew our way around. We managed to communicate at least a bit. And now, we start again.
    New customs, new faces, new language. Are we ready? I don't know. My head manages to keep "sain baa no" (hello in Mongolian) but that's about it. Hopefully it'll change over the course of the next weeks.

    Micha and Sonja, two overland travellers from Ulm that we met yesterday, had given us some advice on routes, what to see where and even gave us a map (paper maps are still the best!). And we're also planning to meet a welll-travelled Mongolian guy in Ulan Baatar that Tom has been in touch with, so at least on that front we feel a tiny bit prepared.

    And so we start to drive. When we get to the border at 9:55am, the gate looks shut. There are several trucks and buses with tourists waiting. A few cars are parked not far away. There still is a path all the way to the front, so we take it. And miraculously the gate opens. On the Russian side of the border, we park the car in front of customs control. An officer in a good mood and decent English explains the next steps: first Tom needs to go into the building with the car documents while I wait in the car. The female officer doesn't like the look of our registration much (it's simply a print out without any official stamps or signatures), but Tom's charme and the fact that it IS the official document, get us through. Then the first officer checks the car along with another female one. We open the back and a few drawers, empty the medicine bag (my homoeopathy is a bit laughed about) and all goes well. We pass, get a second stamp on our temporary import document (TID), exchange good-byes in Russian, English and German and head on to the passport control (still on the Russian side). All good here as well and at 10:37am we officially cross the border.

    First act on the Mongolian side is driving the car through a desinfection bath. Right after, an officer gives us entry cards, while another lady wants to have money for the desinfection. It's all a bit confusing. In the end, Tom takes the car documents to the booth at the entry, I pay the lady and we drive further. Next stop customs control. The officer here simply motions. I'm supposed to go and have my passport checked, while Tom shows him the car. Again, everything runs smoothly. Tom even finds our missing camera adaptors in the medicine bag! Thorough checking does have its advantages after all.
    I get my stamp within minutes and the car control is almost done when I exit the building. Tom goes in as well (the hall looks a bit like the ones at airports, there even is a duty free shop) and once through, we're both wondering what's next. Nobody had told us anything and noone is showing interest. So we drive a little further ahead to reassemble everything, but then a woman comes after us and Tom needs to follow with the car documents again. We get a few more stamps and papers and then that's it. Done!
    At 11:37am we're in Mongolia. We buy a third party insurance for about €35 right before we exit the final gate. Outside it's hot. It's a bit weird with empty stalls and a few shady looking shops on either side.
    We don't find a simcard as no one speaks English. I cuddle the street dogs. We're ready to drive on...    Les mer

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  • Going home

    Mongolia's many faces

    1. juli 2019, Mongolia ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    What do you have in mind when thinking about Mongolia?
    For me, it was mainly open spaces and plenty of horses. Every little girl's dream coming true, simply galopping through beautiful landscape. (Though to be honest, so far I've only seen boys and men on horses...).
    Tom thought about vast open spaces as well, but dreamt more about the off-road routes than the horses.
    Both expectations have been met, but there is so much more!
    Plenty of open spaces for sure, featuring varying landscapes. Rocky desert, sand dunes, dry river beds, ice canyons ("yolin am" still had a bit of ice in it when we visited end of June. During some years, the ice never vanishes, despite it being in the middle of a desert.). Lots of nothingness, dotted with the occasional ger (Mongolian yurts that can be moved as needed), housing herds of different animals. We've seen horses, cows, sheep, goats, camels and even one guy with a few pigs (very rare as pig isn't eaten here). Apparently there is also only one chicken farm in all of Mongolia (they might be difficult to keep through winter?) hence we haven't seen any so far.
    But we've also seen beautiful Mongolian guard dogs (from the safe distance of our car as these guys are well trained to safeguard and you don't want to get too close without the owner around).
    Flies and mozzies have been rare so far, but we've been told that will change once we're close to lakes.
    As it's spring time there are plenty of young animals and I can't get enough of watching them roaming around freely with their mums. I can also get equally obsessed with watching a tiny lizard in the desert. It's like watching "Planet Earth" in real life.
    So much to see, so little to do. Without any source of water to cool down (we now realise how spoilt we were in Russia), our campsites are chosen fairly randomly, allowing us to hike or bike a bit, but mostly simply marvel at the landscape. Taking in the nothingness.    Les mer

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  • Going home
    1

    An evening in a ger

    2. juli 2019, Mongolia ⋅ ☀️ 34 °C

    Now this came unexpected.
    Mongolian hospitality is famous all over the world. The concept of open house, or ger in most of the cases, means anyone is welcome anywhere anytime. Rather difficult to grasp for fairly reserved Germans, wary of their private space.
    In Mongolia, this trait is vital to survival. Everyone is able to travel lightly, knowing that they'll find a place to sleep, will be offered tea and food before heading off to wherever they're going next.
    Apparently staying in a ger is a must do when travelling through this country. We had a hard time imagining ourselves simply going up to a yurt and entering without invitation. Turns out, we didn't have to.
    After a spectacular drive through a mountain massif and after that flat desert, we find a dried out stream leading behind a small dune, hiding us somewhat from the "street" (rather a small dirt road). Just minutes before we had passed a ger with goats and camels and thought we continued far enough to not intrude. Well, the family father thought differently. Shortly after we parked, we have a visitor. Ishten pulls up with his motorbike and admires our home. Despite the difficulty in communication (no internet connection hence no digital translation assistance), we show him around and he continues to show his excitement. Since Hans doesn't have that much to point out, we soon run out of topics and this is when Ishten invites us to his home to eat and sleep. We're tired after a long day of driving and are somewhat dreading the communication issues, but you don't say no to an invitation. So we pack up again and follow our host through the dunes to his ger. Inside, his family (wife, two daughters, grandfather 1 and grandfather 2 and a nephew) are eagerly awaiting us. We get little stools to sit on, are immediately offered tea, candy and camel cheese (everything at the same time which makes it hard to handle) and everyone wants to take pictures. The oldest daughter uses Google translate and her little English to at least make sure we'll exchange pictures through messenger once we have reception. Dinner is already cooking on the stove in the middle. We're trying to remember the dos and don'ts: receive food only with the right hand, don't lean on any beams, don't shake hands over the doorstep, don't hand anything through the beams in the middle neither walk through. Visitors sit on the left side, the right side is for the family. Surprised, we witness that grandpa 2 apparently doesn't care about the in between beam rule. Soon we relax and simply copy our hosts in regards to how to eat, drink and sit. Dinner is noodles in broth with small pieces of meat, everything we're being served is delicious. Luckily, no craziness like cooked sheep head or raw meat.
    When it's time to drink vodka, Tom gets ours from the car, along with gifts for the kids (we brought some koala keyrings). We've come to a family of responsible drinkers. Dad stops after the first and grandpa 2 also stops after 1.5 shots as he still needs to drive. The second half shot is also only drunk as he starts singing. Another Mongolian tradition. Tom has to sing, too. Then grandpa 2 says goodbye and we, too, take this chance to not further stretch the family's hospitality.
    But it's not over yet: outside, Tom is offered to ride the family's bike. No worries there! In return, we once again introduce Hans's features, take down our push bikes for the family to ride (Ishten instantly wants to trade them for a goat) and we all take turns on the hula-hoop. The mum turns out to be a natural talent!
    Then it's really time to go. We say our goodbyes, shake hands and hug, appreciate the Mongolian hospitality and drive a few dunes away to set up camp for the night. How lucky we were! And how amazing of Ishten to invite two complete strangers to his house. Not having a common language didn't keep us from having a good time. We ate, sang, laughed and danced together. What wonderful hosts. Once again, we're left awe-struck upon the generosity and warmth that we've been treated with. Hopefully we can return the favor some time!    Les mer

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  • Going home

    Driving in Mongolia

    5. juli 2019, Mongolia ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C

    Mongolia is every Overlander's and offroad enthusiast's dream destination. After almost crossing Mongolia North to South I'd like to give my impression on what it's like to drive through this beautiful country. Here it is:

    Paved roads (account for about 20% of the road system in Mongolia):

    First of all I’d like to sincerely apologise to the Russian road system for my comment in “Driving in Russia”. You are perfect!

    If Russian roads are a tiny kitten that might unintentionally scratch you once in a while, Mongolian paved roads are like a rabid dog. Stop paying attention for just a second and it bites you in the ass. Hard!

    There’s potholes so big, Camels gather around it and use it as water holes. There’s stretches of several 10s of kilometres which are so badly damaged that people rather drive off-road next to it. Including huge trucks.
    If potholes weren’t enough, road authorities introduce unmarked speed bumps to keep you on your toes. It feels like they are trying to train you to develop reflexes like a fighter pilot!

    Unpaved roads:
    Let me describe a typical day of driving through the Gobi desert.

    You start the day with a surprisingly smooth ride over a wide Steppe. It’s possible to go 60km/h or even faster if one fancies turning the journey into a rally.

    But then the surface changes and you enter the realm of corrugation, the not so silent death of your wheel bearings, shock absorbers and anything else that can vibrate. These ripples on the road, reminding one of a wash board, form under certain conditions when cars drive over dirt roads. Mongolian corrugation is a class of its own. Each single one of them would easily qualify as a proper speed bump in Germany! Now you have a choice to make, either go 10km/h and take on one ripple at a time or go at least 60km/h and fly over them. 60 it is.
    Of course Mongolian unpaved roads are neither straight nor flat. And if there’s anything worse than driving on corrugation, it’s turning corners or breaking on corrugation! You can imagine what flying through the air 50% of the time does to your traction.
    Luckily the Mongolian Steppe is really wide. And I mean REALLY wide. Hence, drivers occasionally open up a new lane to avoid the vibrational experience, which means you have 2 to 10 lanes to choose from. Ever tried to choose the fastest queue at the check out in a supermarket?

    After a few kilometres all of these lanes combine again since you’re now entering a mountainous area only accessible via a small canyon. It’s almost certain that the steep inclines and side slopes ahead will warrant 4WD, low range and a change of underwear after, but nothing the Troopy couldn’t handle!

    Back on the 10 lane Steppe you’re headed for an area of sand dunes. Back into 4WD, drop the tyre pressure and enjoy the roller coaster ride through the soft dunes! Half way through look for a nice spot with a view of the mountain range you’ve crossed just an hour ago and call it a day watching the sand dunes change their colour to a soothing orange!

    Sit back and replay a day in which you drove through a variety of sceneries you previously thought belong on three different continents.    Les mer

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  • Going home
    12

    Camping in Mongolia

    12. juli 2019, Mongolia ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

    In a country so sparcely populated as Mongolia, you can pull up pretty much anywhere for the night.
    The wide space can seem intimidating, too, though. Hence we usually try to find a lake, a stream, a dune or a mountain to make it seem less random.
    I think we've done a pretty good job so far.    Les mer

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