{"id":277,"date":"2019-09-19T05:10:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T05:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/?p=277"},"modified":"2019-09-19T05:57:16","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T05:57:16","slug":"http-fromlondontomongolia-com-mongolia-day-two-car-abandonment-fb-refdefaultfbclidiwar107akdd6cgexwovl1sruytxyf8m95m-1cac5lgzrk-d86dnkfm-ycpmcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/19\/http-fromlondontomongolia-com-mongolia-day-two-car-abandonment-fb-refdefaultfbclidiwar107akdd6cgexwovl1sruytxyf8m95m-1cac5lgzrk-d86dnkfm-ycpmcy\/","title":{"rendered":"Mongolia Day Two: Car abandonment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Robin Ewing
Thursday Aug 15, 2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mongolia is beautiful: broad, flat ranges\nof brushed green with pale flowers, white gers dotting the horizon, small\nhorses with colorful bridles stamping past, blue lakes and glacier streams and mountains\nlike crinkled tinfoil. Men in thick Mongolian deels belted at the waist bounce\nby on motorbikes. The world feels bigger than 360 degrees. The only other time\nI\u2019ve felt this expansion, that there is still so much more to see behind me,\nwas scuba diving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But the roads are hard. Sand becomes dirt\nbecomes mud becomes rock. There are multiple tracks that all kind of seem to go\nin the same direction. There are few signs. We use the compass frequently. The\nBandits ahead of us kick up tall clouds of dust that envelop us so we move to a\nparallel track. It doesn\u2019t matter which side you drive on, they all have holes that\nmaterialize from nowhere and the bottom of the car scrapes, the sound of scratching\nmetal making me wince each time. Sometimes, we\u2019ll get a few minutes of asphalt,\nbut it always abruptly ends in piles of dirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The trail across the mountain steppe is marked with tires buried in the ground. Motorbikes are indispensible to nomads for both transportation and herding animals.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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With few road signs, diverging tracks seem to go in the same direction but a compass is often needed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On day two in western Mongolia, a few hours\noutside of Olgii, we bottom out in a crater and the oil light comes on. We crawl\nunder the van to examine the damage, and oil is streaming down into the dirt\nfrom a hole in the oil pan. Yoav pushes an old water bottle weighted down with\nrocks under the hole to catch the oil. Maybe some tape would fix it, one of us\nsays. Tape fixes everything. Owen just shakes his head sadly at us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re all staring at the oil leak when a\ntruck pulls up.  We pantomime a hole in\nthe oil pan to the driver, he nods knowingly and then hands us some epoxy\nthrough his window. Much better than tape. Owen molds the putty into the hole and\nwe wait for it to harden, like steel the instructions say. It holds. We refill\nthe oil and the light goes off. Disaster averted. Then we try to drive off. We\nmake it a few feet and the car dies.  When\nwe turn it on again, the gas pedal doesn\u2019t respond. On the next try, the car\ndoesn\u2019t start at all. We pop the hood to check things out and the radiator\ndrops a few inches. Opel has given up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alex took this photo of me looking at the busted oil pan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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And so, once again, the Bandits tow us into\ntown. The closest settlement is Tolbo, a tiny place with a few houses, a brick store\nand a mosque surrounded by some gers. I\u2019m not at all hopeful. The village comes\nout to greet us. A bunch of men, yet again, fiddle with the engine to no avail.\nA woman named Janis comes out of the store to talk. She knows all about the\nrally, she says in excellent English. Last year the same thing happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I use Janis\u2019s phone to call the charity\nrally office in Ulaanbaatar. They can send a mechanic but it will take at least\na few days, maybe longer, the manager says. Do I want to wait? I look at a\nchild, face crusted with snot and squatting in the cold dirt, and think about\nwhat I would do for a week in Tolbo. I\u2019ll leave the van, I say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we meet more and more rally teams, my\nstory is not uncommon. The Mongolian roads destroy cars. Every team I met had\nsome sort of problem, many too big to fix on route. The Mongol Rally has\nmechanics and vehicle drop-off points in most major towns. At the mechanics in\nAltay was a van that had been there a year, someone said. My rally, the\nMongolia Charity Rally, has a full time mechanic who travels around the country\nfixing cars. He was already on his way to Bayankhongor, a few hundred miles\naway. Tolbo is now next on his list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ask Janis if there are any cheap cars for\nsale in town I might buy. She looks at me sympathetically and says, No. The\nBandits kindly offer to drive Yoav and me to Ulaanbaatar. They have turned the\nback of their van into a windowless bedroom\/kitchen and the three of them ride\ntogether up front. A metal grate separates the two spaces. To see from the\nback, you have to push your face right up against the bars and grip it with\nyour fingers. Or you can just give up and nap. We call it \u201criding cage.\u201d It\u2019s\neither that or hitch a ride. We opt to stick with the Bandits. They are not\nonly a lot of fun, but great cooks too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We push Opel into Janis\u2019s bricked-in backyard\nand camp there for the night. There is even an outdoor toilet, a hole in the\nground partly surrounded by a wall. We\u2019ll be safe here from the drunks, Janis\nsays. Almost on cue, a man lurches by outside moaning. \u201cDrunk,\u201d she says and\nlooks at me knowingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a cold and clear night. I\u2019ve never\nseen so many stars, and one shoots across the black sky. In Mongolia, a\nshooting star means someone is dying. (The Falling Stars attack was also when\nthe brutal Mongol horde would suddenly and savagely attack from all directions\nat once and then quickly disappear, leaving carnage and confusion in the sudden\nsilence.)  It\u2019s not a good thing to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the morning, we transfer all of our\nstuff to the Bandit\u2019s van. It is a tight squeeze. Think of it like Tetris, Owen\nsays. I pay Janis $50 to watch Opel until the mechanic shows up. We buy some\nchocolate from her and climb into the van, which the boys call \u201cThe Unit.\u201d They\nfeel sorry for us and let us sit in the front as we drive off, trying to figure\nout which of the many dirt tracks will take us out of town. Everyone waves\nvaguely in the direction of a mountain so we head that way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tolbo, population 1,000, is a predominately Kazakh settlement.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Opel in the back of Janis’s house.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I get a last, sad little glimpse of Opel\nbefore the gate swings shut. She was a good van. A city girl. She\u2019ll be great\nin Ulaanbaatar once she makes it there. The charity will fix her up. I wave\ngoodbye to her and we rattle off. We both have a long journey ahead of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Robin EwingThursday Aug 15, 2013 Mongolia is beautiful: broad, flat ranges of brushed green with pale flowers, white gers dotting the horizon, small horses with colorful bridles stamping past, blue lakes and glacier streams and mountains like crinkled tinfoil. Men in thick Mongolian deels belted at the waist bounce by on motorbikes. The world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":278,"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-277","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\/RE-IMG_2254.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","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=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}