Back In The Saddle From Ulaanbaatar To Bulgan

The life of a cycle tour­ist is often dic­tated by the forces of nature. This was never more true than for the first week’s jour­ney­ing from the Mon­go­lian cap­ital out into the depths of the steppes. Rain, snow, hail, head­winds, tail­winds, sidewinds, dust-storms, bak­ing sun, freez­ing cold, cloud tapestries and clear blue skies all made an appear­ance, often within a couple of hours of each other. This was going to be no place for whinge­ing about the weather.

Head­ing west out of Ulaan­baatar on the new asphalt road

I felt pretty low as we left the city behind us. It was some­thing to do with the wind and the mono­tony of the empty asphalt com­bined with the hum­bling vast­ness of the land­scape. I remembered just what a slog bike travel could some­times be. I was unfit. A few hours in and I was already bored of grind­ing the ped­als and feel­ing like I was going nowhere.

Then I stopped and gave myself a kick up the back­side to remind myself that there were always times like this, and that they always bal­anced out in the long term with the unpre­dict­able joys of inde­pend­ent, unplanned bicycle travel. Moan over, get going.

But some­thing had def­in­itely changed. My enthu­si­asm for bike exped­i­tions had always been matched by my tenacity when under­tak­ing them. But now I was begin­ning to real­ise some­thing, with a cer­tain feel­ing of glad­ness: There is life bey­ond bike trips. I don’t have to spend my time off the bike wish­ing I was still on it. This real­isa­tion came with hap­pi­ness; it meant that I was get­ting ready to move on, and to con­cen­trate on things in my life which had become more import­ant — and to take these respons­ib­il­it­ies with the exper­i­ence of the world I’d been so lucky to have.

In the mean­time, how­ever, I was in Mon­go­lia, for the first and prob­ably the last time, doing what I sup­pose Andy and I had always felt was the epi­tome of our ori­ginal idea: a long and chal­len­ging off-road mountain-bike exped­i­tion. We headed north-west, and I found myself ped­alling into the sun­set every day instead of away from it. The asphalt petered out and I fol­lowed dirt tracks through rugged, tree­less pas­ture­land; land so smooth and bare that we could spon­tan­eously lurch off the route and go spin­ning across the open coun­try, drink­ing in the exhil­ar­a­tion of such abso­lute free­dom; the sym­bi­osis of per­fectly engin­eered machine and re-awakened, long-conditioned leg muscle.

Andy ascend­ing a pass on a Mon­go­lian dirt road

Dis­tances in Mon­go­lia are vast, and at any given moment we could see twenty, thirty kilo­metres in every dir­ec­tion, name­less hill­tops fringing our par­tic­u­lar val­ley, each capped with a little pile of stones and trinkets, evolving and unplanned monu­ments to noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar except humans’ obses­sion with reach­ing the highest, fur­thest, hard­est point. Some­times more dis­tant ridges were vis­ible, with no pol­lu­tion to soil the atmo­sphere; we could pick out cloud­scapes and moun­tain ranges a hun­dred or more kilo­metres distant.

The spec­tacle would often change in a mat­ter of minutes. We’d be rid­ing under a clear blue sky, avoid­ing wash­board tracks and patches of loose sand, stop­ping for a bit of ger-spotting, try­ing to guess how many hun­dred sheep or horses there were in a dis­tant herd, avoid­ing the broken glass of a dis­carded vodka bottle — then a shawl of grey would begin to drag itself over the hori­zon, the wind would pick up; half and hour later we’d be churn­ing heads-down into a fierce gale or cower­ing behind a crude bike-and-poncho shel­ter. Once a huge dust-cloud appeared ahead of us with all the malign intent of a Hol­ly­wood mon­ster, we dropped our bikes and charged across the plain in an attempt to out­flank it before we were engulfed. We returned to our bikes to find every exposed sur­face covered with a thin film of fine brown dust.

Camp­ing wild in Mon­go­lia near Orhan under stormy skies

After sev­eral nights pitch­ing our tents on windswept hill­sides or behind piles of rocks, we found some­thing resem­bling the dream camp­site — a few hun­dred paces from a flow­ing river, in the shel­ter of the hills on the far bank, far from the track we’d fol­lowed. The sun was shin­ing and we had a bag of dill-flavoured instant mash and a can of spicy beef stew wait­ing to be cooked for dinner.

Just as we were shar­ing out that deli­cious meal, a horse­man came over to check us out. We’d seen him round­ing up his horses in the dis­tance. His name was Bolta and he asked us — as every­one did — The Ques­tions: Where are you going, where are you from, where did you start, how many days? He took a seat on the ground and con­tem­plated our merry little camp. Wolves might come and eat us in the night, he chuckled. He wore a pair of long leather rid­ing boots and a long over­coat that exten­ded to his fin­ger­tips. On his head was a faded base­ball cap with an inde­cipher­able graffiti-style logo. Life moved slowly for Bolta. There was no rush; plenty of time for com­fort­able silences. His horse tossed her head. Andy and I were think­ing about our mashed potato going cold.

Bolta, head of one of Mongolia’s many mod­ern nomadic herd­ing families

Sud­denly he poin­ted to the sky and I looked round to see a dra­matic assemblage of rain­clouds depos­it­ing their load on the hills a few kilo­metres away. We’d been in Mon­go­lia for long enough to assume we were next in the fir­ing line. Bolta got up and invited us for break­fast in his ger the fol­low­ing morn­ing and depar­ted on his little Mon­go­lian pony, just as the first rain­drops spattered off our tents. We dived for cover as the rain turned out to be golf-ball-sized lumps of semi-frozen slush. I threw my din­ner into the tent and fol­lowed after it, fum­bling with the strap that held my tent door open and get­ting it tangled — the sleet was now com­ing down in sheets, accom­pan­ied by tre­mend­ous gusts of wind — finally free­ing the strap and zip­ping the awn­ing closed. My lower half was already drenched. I sat halfway inside the tent with my feet stick­ing out, laugh­ing at nature’s whim from beneath the water­proof shell, and began to eat my mashed potato.

See more of my pho­tos on Flickr. Andy’s are prob­ably funnier.

Thanks for read­ing. You might also like these recent articles:

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