Route : A grassland a dozen kms from Dzag, Mongolia >>> Tseserleg, Mongolia
Approx Distance : 300km
The Duduk Rally Plate...we were alive and well cos of that piece of metal. Ever so grateful to the people who put that in...
Woke up to the smell of greasy exhaust fumes…the Suzuki started its engine and spat out the remains right onto our tent…damn. Anyway, we got going on a brilliant morning…we were hoping to reach Tserserleg today early…we started off on the relatively decent terrain…the sand and grass made it a bit slippery..but nothing that we couldn’t handle…or so we thought!! Now it was my turn to lose control…we were driving on the ridges formed by heavier vehicles passing…at some decent speed…a slight turn of the steering and the car careened out of the road and bounced across the countryside for a while seriously threatening to flip over…was quite a scary 5 seconds. We stopped the car soon after, agreed that all our scores were even (Raja and Rajesh already had near misses), waited for the Suzuki to catch up and proceeded into the green land…
We reached Dzag soon and scouted a bit for some fueling option…just the low octane stuff available…we figured we can easily reach Tserserleg after our full tank at Altai. We carried on…didn’t get far beyond the next village when we heard another strange noise from the familiar region of the vehicle…the exhaust. But this time the whole car seemed to slow down a bit…hmmm…We stopped the car and braced for something drastic…we were not disappointed. The last bit of the exhaust actually dropped to the floor, probably bounced off it at the high speed and hit the car again at such an angle that it got stuck between the rear right suspension and the tire!! It was actually wedged in that tight…damn…!! We tried to pry it out for a while before being struck by a brainwave to jack up the car and loosen the tire a bit until the exhaust fell out. We did just that…and by this time we felt like surgeons almost! 
Yes...it finally fell off...but not before bouncing off the road and almost breaking the wheel joint. It got stuck between the wheel and the suspension!!
We didn’t feel like throwing the piece away…it can easily be attached back with some welding…so it rode with us till the finish! Anyway, we caught up with the Suzuki and before we could move out a bit, got stuck in a big pit of really loose gravel…this time we made it out without any external help….just rocked the car back and forth a bit before it broke out loose…phew. Then we did spy the next village but Dink had a brainwave to take an off road path…he thought it might be shorter…yeah maybe…but not necessarily time saving…we got stuck again! This time, this was due to my brainwave combined with some rash optimism at being able to make it across a rather deepish stream with loose gravel banks!! We did make it across…but the car got stuck in the gravel…the gravel infact hit the underbody at around the rear edge of the Duduk plate and got tightly stuck! Damn! We tired a lot of tricks…tried digging the car out…pushing…pulling…finally a bit of manpower, as usual, did the trick…we physically lifted the front of the car up until Kristie could reverse out of the problematic piece of real estate…then she gunned the engine a bit until the car crawled out of its place…damn…another 45 mins down the drain! The children was looking at us as if we were idiots…i can imagine that…no one from their village would have got stuck at that point…imagine a fat guy getting stuck trying to pass through a narrow door…hehe. Anyway, we got to the village and asked for directions…when they knew where we were heading to, they started laughing! Actually, laughing out loud! Hmmm…it turns out that they were laughing at the Peugeot…the reckoned we wont make it. Ooookkkk…now this is something, till now no one laughed at us like this and these guys obviously knew the region…looked a bit ominous. Anyway, we left without lingering too much while dodging lucrative offers for the Suzuki…
Erm...that was me...i got us into that quagmire...foolhardy plan to cross the stream at that point. took us 45 minutes and lots of muslce to get ourselves outta that one...
Then the road disappeared…and the mountains started…we were passing through a national park and nature reserve. Of course, no boundaries, no fences, nothing. The scenery was stunning…and for us, it was just another part of typical Mongolia…we saw the occasional Ger, we saw the occasional motorbike rider, the cars/vans/jeeps dried up though, we saw loads of livestock (predominantly Yak and sheep) grazing…but what was different was the route. It was becoming almost impassable for the Peugeot…steep inclines (We had to push a couple of a times), very steep side inclines on sandy roads (ideal spots to flip the car), grass which provided no decent footing for the tires (the car kept veering off course until wrenched back a good meter or so back onto the road) and a lot more. The Peugeot was being beaten up at previously inconceivable levels…we were now on roads where the Khovd-Altai stretch seemed like the German autobahn in comparison. The duduk rally plate took massive hits as did the entire body work on the sides..the exhaust was miraculously still in place and we didn’t have any flats till now. We went on for hours like this…we had to cross rivers a couple of times…managed it nice and steady…then, the rocks started…
The road was at a point just rocks…no sand…no mud…just rocks! Punctuated by the odd grass sticking out…just rocks! From the size of a lemon till the size of footballs…smooth rocks. The smoothness of the rocks indicates that this might be the spot of a much larger river in the rainy season or maybe this was the site of a very very ancient glacier…in any case, we were going through the ride of our lives. Average speeds on this section was about 6-7 kmph. The first and second gears were groaning out their hearts in pain…there was nothing we could do but push, push and push more. If we broke down on this section, we can forget about getting the car out…and maybe might take days to actually get back to civilisation. We could have found some food in a Ger or something…but we hardly saw any motorised transport for hours. We were truly alone here…
A mini stone henge in the middle of nowhere...was captivating...especially the carved stones...a glorious past?
The car took on more hits..the fuel filter and fuel lines were protected by sheet metal on the rear right side of the car. The brake lines were dangerously exposed though…those were right below the driver…and each time we hot the left side of the car, we had to check if we still had brakes…and each time we hit the center, we had to check if the exhaust was in place or the fuel tank was ruptured. After a while, we lost count of the number of hits the Duduk rally plate took. Tensions were high….Raja had to get back to his job (for fear of losing it otherwise) by the 24th…and at this pace, it really looked like it would take a while…he was not too happy. Rajesh seemed to be half dead bouncing about like a sac of cotton at the back. Raja totally lost it after a while with these roads…he stopped and walked out!! I agree that it can get frustrating…but i told him that once we are through this, we can be proud. Of course we can be proud, i can bet a million bucks right now that not half the cars which we met at Altai would have made it through this stretch without any major issue cropping up. I took over the wheel and the pain continued…the hours slipped by….we were still rocking and bouncing and scraping and destroying the car…but it was still moving…the engine was still not complaining…the more time slipped by, the more i seriously appreciated the car, my mechanics back in Germany and the Duduk rally plate. This plate was an inch thick steel plate…it was very sound and it didn’t even bend or change its shape inspite of all the hits it took. As time passed, we began to believe that we can make it out of this horror road…we crossed a river and just then, BAM! Flat tire…
Classic Mongolia
Luckily the ground was not too rocky just after the river, we could find a spot for the jack to grip the ground. During this small respite, i looked around at how beautiful the scene was…it would take a truly romantic and possibly foolish mind to appreciate beauty when the car was this close from falling apart…but i had faith in the Tank. Yes, we have been calling our can the Tank for a while now…that was based on how it ate up the highway from Europe to Kazakhstan…we were easily the fastest and most comfortable car around. And now, in this car wrecking hell hole, it was still carrying on…the Tank indeed. We saw more Gers…more horses…and suddenly, we saw a van parked by the Ger…hmmm…a 4 wheels mode of transportation! Yippeee! Maybe the bad bit is over after all…we didn’t see anything else for another half hour though and the road was still trying to kill metal. We passed a Ger where they had about a half dozen eagles tethered to a stand…wow. Can imagine them using these for hunting the Marmot and the Squirrels which were all over the place! Anyway, we did pass the worst bit of road in an hour or so and were back on Mongolian “highways” if it can be called that…back to snowboarding the car and sliding out of control in a rush of adrenaline before fighting back…yay! It was by no means “safe”, but the joy of 4th gear…ahhhhhhh! We were speechless with joy…
It was now that i noticed that i had to hold the steering wheel in 30 degrees turned to the left to maintain and straight line….hmmm…and i guessed some of the suspension springs were broken on the right side. Luckily, clutch was working, all gears in place…and we were very much mobile…although the exhaust note was not really corvette now…it sounded more like an old beetle! Anyway, we made good speed towards Tserserleg…and we did not want to stop no matter what.
Thats the road which almost killed us...steering system, suspension, tires, rims, gear box...all were teetering at the edge after that hell. This is also my favourite snap of the rally...
The sun didn’t wait for us to reach Tserserleg though…the worst was over…but driving in the Mongolian darkness brought its own challenges with it. Our regulation headlights were still working and we couldn’t use our special rally fitted flood lamps because we didn’t have any. So, with the distance we could see, we had to negotiate the hilly roads…the Suzuki was leading now…and soon it became us just trying the maintain the size of the red dots up front at the same size breathing through dust and sand being blown at our faces by a rather unfavourable wind bearing. Anyway, we lost sight of the Suzuki for a while because we had to get out to push (or so we thought) the car up a steepish incline…after a few minutes of driving, the road dropped VERY steeply into what seemed like a solid rock wall!! I stopped, took out the torch and proceeded on foot…wanted to check out what i am getting myself into before actually getting into it (no way back anyway)…so i rounded the bend, the road did proceed…but then i saw something which i did not expect…trees…loads of them…infact, it was a full blown forest gently whispering in the wind. Standing there in total darkness with just a torch and staring into a thick wall of trees gently swaying with its curled up fingers, errr…was a bit scary…i didn’t feel like walking further on and following what looked like the road into the trees…threw our fate into the hands of god and accelerated into the abyss…
The trees almost stepped away to reveal a smallish narrowing road through them…hmm…felt very very weird…almost like harry potter driving his Ford Anglia through the enchanted forest…scary for us all. We kept on for a while…the trees got a bit thinner and we spied some tail lamps up ahead. Under the assumption that’s its not a angler fish which learnt how to walk on land and prey on cars, we followed it hoping to see a Suzuki and some friends on the other side of it. It took more than half an hour to catch up with them though…and it was the Suzuki. Phew…anyway, we kept on for some more hours until we did make it to a town which we thought was Tserserleg…turns out that it was still 25 kms that a way….groan! With these roads, a good 45 minutes…and it was already close to 10pm…anyway, we started driving that a way and suddenly, out of the pitch black inkiness, we saw something black and made of pitch among other things…TARMAC! Yooohooo!! We made it Tserserleg in about 15 mins with all smiles…found a gas station witha rather unhelpful chap to ask for directions. Realised that we had been driving with a flat for quite a while (that explained the strange noise once we got onto the tarmac) cos its quite hard to notice that after that we had been through…so we fixed the flat at the fuel station, whipped out the lonely planet and made for this English bakery/cafe/hostel called Fairfield.
It was very late of course…the few people to whom we asked directions seemed to derive some sadistic pleasure in directing us wherever their version of Fairfield was…we went around in quite a few circles until we finally found the place half invisible in the shadows. Unfortunately it was full…there was a hotel right next food though…we didn’t complain. The roads were filled with drunken idiots who either jeered and laughed at us or simply were busy being totally useless when asked for directions…we didn’t like that too much of course. Anyway, took whatever the hotel people gave us and had some old meat for dinner at the in house restaurant and crashed off looking forward to the decent roads promised to us from Tserserleg all the way to Ulaanbataar…the home stretch baby!!
