A late start to the day to get a big breakfast at the nearby restaurant – much appreciated.

Fairly standard fare.

Not so standard – the fried bread particularly good.

I was pleased, anyway. (Rachel’s photo.)

Down the valley we went to join the Orkhon again and follow its left side towards Kharkorin and a rest day. All the traffic seemed to be on the other side of the river – we soon found out why, having to negotiate a number of washed out stream beds where the road was no more. This made for some interesting riding, and occasional pushing. Unusual signs of flash flooding down this stretch. Between these bits the riding was good, with occasional climbs up around cliffs; the headwind started to nag a bit, but did provide some cooling.

Happened upon some Bronze Age deer stones.

A ford of the Orkhon was marked on our maps, but keeping an eye out for that was fruitless – the river was too high. Approaching town, various monuments and tourist facilities started to appear across the river – but we had to find our way around a sandy section of river flats.

Stopping on the approach to the bridge waiting for the others, I was beckoned from quite some distance to a collection of vehicles on the river bank. A delightful family group (five vehicles, at least twenty people of all ages) travelling west from Ulaanbaatar were finishing up a large lunch and plied us with masses of food. Just as well we didn’t have far to ride, as a hot meaty soup, milk tea, peaches and candy were offered and gratefully accepted. A few of the family spoke varying degrees of English, so communication was more satisfying than usual – our Mongolian language ability still woeful. Some of the younger of the group had a go at riding our loaded bikes – went well enough, although the power of hydraulic brakes was a little surprising to them!

Waving farewell as we rode across the bridge to Kharkorin.

A few kilometres later we were at our guesthouse, where we stayed in another ger, and looking forward to a big meal. Unfortunately that was to be the end of our bikepacking in Mongolia – as we wanted a rest day to look around Kharkorin and none of us wanted to ride into the traffic of Ulaanbaatar in a few days’ time. That meant we left a few days riding on the table, which was only regrettable in hindsight – there were plenty of other things to do, both activities and all the tasks of packing to leave.

A beautiful fresh morning with no signs of bears, wolves or flooding that our friend from the previous night seemed so concerned about.

Good herd of local yaks though.

Back down the tributary and the Orkhon valley it was, but the valleys were wide enough we barely retraced any of the same track.

At some stages the lava fields forced us off our bikes and to walk for short sections. Most of the time they were good fun to pick a path to ride through.

Just before the Orkhon confluence, a long stream appeared from seemingly nowhere. I waded through while the others went off to find an easier, possibly dryer, crossing. Not that it made much difference, it was wet feet anyway for the crossing of the river we’d been following. I completed the crossings with little difficulty and then waited fifteen minutes for the others to complete their excursion. I think they found that the new stream was spring fed, some hundreds of metres away.

Enough time to watch a UAZ make easy work of an arced crossing.

Even easier for this herd.

Rachel eventually came back to take an unexpected dip in the cool water and make a good attempt to get trapped under her bike, Ian taking a much longer route back to us. That entertainment over, a short detour to the Orkhon Falls – bit touristy, but worth a look.

Another day, another photo request from a passerby.

Mongolia what it is, we didn’t have head back to the main road – instead finding any track that would take us down the right side of the Orkhon. Turned out to be a bit of a windy path back to the bridge we’d crossed two days earlier – soon passed in a cloud of dust and noise by the organised tour of motorbikes that we’d tried to run away from back at the falls.

Strange for an ovoo to be on low ground.

Getting back to the gers at the bridge.

Having crossed the river, our long gradual descent got distinctly lumpy before we turned and climbed towards Tuvkhun.

The climb started to get a bit hot and steep, but there was a surprise when we discovered a restaurant at the park gates – where we were well fed, and learnt that we had to camp in the designated campground nearby. Pleasingly we found that they’d be open for breakfast too. Having pitched tents around the small picnic shelter, it was a short ride further up the valley towards the monastery.

Monastery in those rocks at the top of the hill – a steep three kilometres walk up through the trees.

An important old monastery, it didn’t make it through the Soviet era well – but was restored about thirty years ago. A bit tired from the hike up, there was a pleasing lack of fall protection on some precarious, scrambling paths from the main buildings up to the summit. Admittedly, it was hair-raising watching some of the older pilgrims trying to get across to some gap in the rocks – passing through this would lead to being born again.

(Rachel’s photo.)

The descent on foot was predictably sore on the cycling legs, the short roll down to camp was fun through the rocks – but the others were delayed after Ian’s tyre came off second best against a rock. The wind howled down the valley that evening, which made cooking and most things very difficult – although we did enjoy the company of a family from Ulaan Baatar, the son unexpectedly telling us that he races cross-country mountain bikes. The wind was doing my head in, so it was early to bed.

Having managed to time things right so we get to a local festival, having just missed many Nadaam celebrations earlier in the month, the objective of the day was to find the Orkhon Valley Yak Festival. Its exact location on a map was elusive, but riding up the valley until we found a big crowd was sure to be enough. But first, resupply was delayed by shops in town not opening until nine o’clock – which gave a chance to mosey around continuing my fascination with haunting overgrown playgrounds, elaborate fences, and colourful buildings.

I’ve concluded that grass in spaces, without grazing animals, is kept long due to the novelty of grass growing for short stretches of the year when it’s not covered in snow.

But I still find overgrown playgrounds disturbing.

Colourful block wall hiding the town heat plant – this one obviously coal-fired, I assume providing central hot water supply as in other towns and cities we’d visited.

Eventually we’d restocked for two days and began up the valley.

Easy going intially.

Following whatever track we could find became more fun as they wound their way through lava strewn areas.

Plenty of yaks, fittingly.

We could tell we were on the right track due to an uncommonly high number of people dressed in traditional finery riding past on motorcycles.

Still going, but with an ice cream stop in the warmth, surely the festival is to be found before those hills.

Found it!

Yet, in the other direction…

About as much yak action as we saw.

It was difficult to work out what the yak festival was about as the animal seemed barely featured, and disappointingly no yak comestibles to be bought. But it was good fun people watching, the locals that is – despite seeing the most westerners for weeks.

Even some Mongolia wrestling (the national sport), although what we saw seemed mostly posturing, saluting the flag, waving to the crowd and little wrestling.

What wrestling we did see was incomprehensible!

Of course, there was a tricked out old Prius around.

Appealing, but difficult to carry and even worse as a riding shoe.

Enough crowds, time to find somewhere quieter to camp.

Off up a side valley towards the Eight Lakes, a trekking attraction only accessible by foot and hoof.

I was keen to see how far up we could get towards the first lake, but that seemed a non-starter so we turned off and found a nice campsite by a river. Just as tents were going up a student staying nearby came and introduced himself, and was mightily concerned the river would flood overnight and we should seek higher ground.

Spoiler – this area did not flood overnight.

But neither did this one, and the mounds of rock did provide a little shelter from the breeze.

The student recommended we ride further up the valley, so off we went and were not disappointed.

Some good waterfall action along this stretch.

A rare grave marker…

…in the middle of a field.

The valley opened up and just kept going.

Eventually we had to turn for camp and dinner.

Our friend returned and it was interesting to hear of his life as a young student and how he’d done some compulsory national service – border guard in wintry conditions well below freezing point at some mountain outpost sounded no picnic.

But coats such as these helped.

Bit heavy to load on a bike though.

Our new friend spoiled us with clotted cream – finally, some yak products for the day!

A cool morning greeted us outside our tents, the long wildflowers still sodden from overnight rain. Pretty wet by the time we’d packed up and negotiated the bog below the hot springs.

Did manage to not get any wetter negotiating these slippery little bridges.

(Rachel’s photo.)

Having backtracked to the stupa we visited, down the left of the river we went trying to find a suitable crossing point.

We did get safely across, but even then the best route up to the next pass was not as apparent as earlier in the trip. Normal transmission resumed and the last part of the climb over this pass got steep enough to have us pushing and warming up a little – but the warmth quickly disappeared on the ride down to the next river.

I even stopped to put some thicker gloves and extra layers on, but that was somewhat negated by falling in a rocky creek as we started to parallel the river!

Over that river, the initial gradual climb and cloud breaking up did help to warm us as lunch approached. The group of Malaysian tourists in a large convoy of new LandCruisers found us quite the spectacle – to my bemusement.

This is completely normal, surely?

Pushing again from here as the surface got slippy and steep.

No pushing down there.

Having crossed that basin, the exit was strangely twisty and not just straight up.

More walking though.

Probably our last time through two thousand metres altitude on the trip, soon dropping to the Orkhon Valley.

A fun descent it was too, strange to see a permanent building out in these parts.

Starting to look for a campsite before the Orkhon, we didn’t really have quite enough supplies so headed for the bridge (no fording this river).

Milling around a small ger collection on a busy road over the bridge, we were kindly gifted some beers by a passing motorist – somehow they survived the bumpy lava strewn ride into town ten kilometres away. Town, Bat-Ulzii, seemed a bit quiet but we found food at a place that doubled as one of the many Kapoake (replace the p) places we’d seen. While we were too early for a spot of singing, somehow this turned out to be one of the, if not the, best meals we had on the road – I’m still unsure what exactly it was though.

While we ate, an intense dust storm blew up from the north. Lingering over our meals longer, it finally eased and a nice campsite south of town was found to end one of our longer days.