Bikes loaded with all our gear (having left some behind on the Lake Khovgol out-and-back) and food for days, our northern Mongolia bikepacking proper got underway.
Saddlebag swollen, handy but distractingly bright crocs installed in most convenient place – but the bane of all subsequent bike photos.
Found another Chinggis statue on our way out of town.
Some sort of procession, celebration in front of the statue – seemingly only attended by people that drive LandCruisers.
Leaving Murun.
Back across to the route that returned us to town the previous day.
Nests on the roadside, after many birds flew out I was only fast enough to snap one blur.
Sealed road on the way out of Khovsgol province.
We left the sealed road, to the left, after the bridge.
On to rough, rutted gravel the going was slow along the valley floor – mostly due to flood damage.
Turning to climb out the valley, the surface improved.
Past animals and a Prius – encapsulating much of our riding in Mongolia.
Stopping to refuel before the last, steeper stretch to the pass.
Gathering clouds.
Becoming harder work.
Jackets on as we were pushing, and the surface got a bit slicker for the vehicles.
Strangely the little trucks (typically Korean) made harder work of it than more low-slung cars.
It was hard enough work for us, thankfully the rain had taken the edge off the temperature.
It was pleasing to find a small group of buildings, including a shop, just over the rise at the top of the steepness – cue a picnic lunch beside an ovoo (left below – travellers walk around clockwise three times for travel blessings).
Over two thousand metres, the lowered air pressure was obvious in these angry birds.
From here, I spent most of the rest of the day feeling I was riding across someone’s Windows XP desktop.
The last fifty metres to climb the pass was much gentler.
The ride down was pretty nice too! Too much fun to take many photos but.
A very mellow, long descent across the next valley – spoilt for choice of dirt tracks. Best guesses were made as to which one to take.
On a prow before another little descent we met the first of many family groups travelling home into the countryside that we would see. A few Priuses, a dozen or more people, many questions funnelled through the one person who spoke English, lots of smiles and gifts of food – always enjoyable.
Often a group photo as well.
A splendid afternoon of pleasant riding across the vast landscape…
Over the last little rise we dropped to the Bugsein River and set about finding a campsite away from the relatively busy dirt road. Think we found a pretty good one to cap off an excellent first day on the route Rachel and Ian had put together.
(I was lucky to have shoes at the end of the day – having taken them off to cross the river, my knots were subpar and off they went. I found one pretty quickly, but the other took a long time for us to find – I was pleased Ian did find it! A nice walk down the beautiful river was certainly a silver lining to the rather amusing predicament.)