Bus, where are you? “I’m right here.”

18.10.11

We set off to the bus station 6am in the morning although the bus departed at 8am, better safe than sorry. The bus station was what you would expect to find in Mongolia, small, cold and nothing special. This is where I met the 6th member of our expedition group, Greg from USA. The bus, however, was a bit of a shocker for me. I was looking out for a regular long distance bus. Instead we found out our bus was the mini-kind. Of course overbooked and filled with everyone's luggage as well as postal parcels, gas and water containers, tools, engine parts and what not.

That's the engine right behind me. Was warming up us really nicely (among other things). Every stop we made there was something to fix.

One tough grandma

Luckily enough Elise had gotten us the best seats (by accident) that were facing the back of the bus

(this is also how we avoided witnessing all the horrors seen from the drivers window described later to us by Greg). Can't say they were comfortable seats at any grade but we managed, stuffing our legs and bodies where ever they may fit at any given time. Worse off was poor Greg at the backseat where there was absolutely no room to move your legs and every time the bus run into a pothole (actually the road was more like potholes with a little bit of road in between) he would jump up, hit hes head on the ceiling and knees on the seat in front of him.

The trip was supposed to take 12-18 hours till Dalanzadgad but 60 km and 4 hours after departing Ulaanbaatar, the bus broke down, naturally (it was the fuel line I think). We had to return to the last pit-stop. So we waited in the middle of nowhere with some cows for close to 4 more hours for the repair parts to arrive and the bus to be repaired. There was a small restaurant/shop and the weather was sunny so we were ok.

The guy with all the coal insisted we do 2 on 1 standing up arm-wrestling. Needless to say we let him win (or did we?)

PV is everywhere here, albeit in small installations due to the price. Mongolia IS the ideal location for utilizing solar energy, they have around 250 sunny days a year!

The sheer nothingness around you is overwhelming.

Then it all started to happen. We ran into Mongolian “Rap-King” and his photographer/film maker and there was a lot of vodka-drinking (mostly on their part), arm wrestling standing up, a LOT of trash-talk from the rap-king, military salutations, you know, the works. I'll see if I can find one of his music videos later.

EDIT: And here it is!

After we finally set for the road, the sun was already getting down. 60 km behind, 420 km to go! 8 hours passed.

The bus ride was interesting to say the least. Stopping in the middle of nowhere once every two hours or so, in the dark, people jumping over the luggage and other people to get out for pee, smoke, air and most importantly, to stretch their limbs. The smell of gasoline inside the bus was so acrid we needed to cover our mouths with scarfs to avoid headaches.

Sleep-a-sutra by Elise and Jasper, pt.1

After 23 hours of traveling, we arrived to Dalanzadgad. It was 7am, still dark, cold and windy. We decided to stay at the bus station until it was light and warm enough to go hunting for some breakfast and most importantly someone with a jeep to take us to the desert!