{"id":258,"date":"2019-09-17T14:15:07","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T14:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/?p=258"},"modified":"2019-09-17T14:15:11","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T14:15:11","slug":"entering-mongolia-paperwork-wrestling-and-a-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/17\/entering-mongolia-paperwork-wrestling-and-a-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Entering Mongolia: paperwork, wrestling and a party"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Robin Ewing
Wednesday, Aug 14, 2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A small, blond border guard in long braids and\na camouflage uniform waves us out of Russia, and the tarmac immediately turns to\ndirt. A few miles later, we pull up to Mongolia, but the gate is locked. It is\nlunchtime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Russia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Mongolia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Mongol Rally has caught up with us. The\nseparate, and much bigger, rally of a few hundred teams in tiny cars left\nLondon a week after us. Everyone takes different routes, but the Tsagaannuur border\ncrossing into western Mongolia is a bottleneck. Cars start lining up behind us,\nand suddenly it becomes a social. Out comes the football, the Frisbee, the\nNutella and stale bread. An English man shares his power steering fluid with us\n(we\u2019re leaking again), and I play cards with Narmy on our picnic\/mechanic\nblanket in the road. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At 2pm, a woman in a shed makes us all buy\na $1 disinfectant stamp. No disinfectant appears. Then someone opens the gate\nto the country, and we all drive into a fenced in parking lot filled with more\nMongol Rally teams waiting to be processed. Everyone is lounging, eating,\nchatting and playing games. It feels like a spring break party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importing a car to Mongolia takes a lot of\npaperwork and deposit money. At one point, I saw a man look up the value of my\ncar on Gumtree (a UK site similar to Craigslist). We\u2019d heard rumors that it\ncould take up to four days, which is why we stocked up on vodka. As car owners,\nOwen and I have to deal with all the vehicle forms and stamps, moving from\nlittle room to little room as our papers are passed from desk to desk. We miss out\non the parking lot party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mongolian border closes at 6pm. At\n5:55pm, we press our noses against the office window, watching people fondle\nour passports and car registration and occasional type something on an old\ncomputer while lazily eating cookies they aren\u2019t sharing. We don\u2019t want to\nsleep in the parking lot so we give them puppy dog eyes while staring longingly\nat the cookies. Just after 6pm, a man beckons us out to the lot where we give\nhim $10. We can go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We drive off jubilantly. Just outside the\ngate, a scraggly man in a ragged safety vest waving a dented orange baton aggressively\nblocks our path and tells us he\u2019s police. He briefly flashes a suspicious\nlooking ID and tries to manhandle Owen into a shed to buy insurance. We drive\naround him as he belligerently pretends to call the police on a beat up old\nphone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We drive a little more, past mosquito\ninfested lakes and herds of goats, and make camp. More rally teams pull up,\nsome Mongolians roar over on motorbikes, the vodka comes out and it\u2019s a party. The\nMongolians inspect our cars and challenge Owen to a wrestling match. He\nrepresents well despite spraining his thumb. There is a little Mongolian\ndancing. And a guitar. The Bandits make the best lentil curry I\u2019ve had yet. It is\na beautiful spot under the mountains, freezing cold, round white gers and blue\nlakes in the distance. I wrap up in borrowed blankets and fall asleep happily in\nthe van. We made it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only a thousand miles to go to Ulaanbataar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
A Mongolian challanges a tourist to an imprompteu wrestling match on the western steppe. Wrestling is one of Mongolia’s national sports and has been around for 2,000 years.If any part of the body touches the ground, the contestent loses.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Robin EwingWednesday, Aug 14, 2013 A small, blond border guard in long braids and a camouflage uniform waves us out of Russia, and the tarmac immediately turns to dirt. A few miles later, we pull up to Mongolia, but the gate is locked. It is lunchtime. The Mongol Rally has caught up with us. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/IMG_2279.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions\/266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}