all right! A quick post, as we’re about to jump a van to the Dragon Centre bus station in west Ulaan Baatar – providing it turns up. We have four tickets for the two us us, an insurance policy against having so damn much luggage, and the ostensible 15kg limit – but today we hear (and kinda already knew) that they just cram the buses waist-deep with boxes and bags in the aisles, so, maybe we can sell our extra tickets to these two young Israeli girls.
The rain yesterday rained right in the open window onto our bike boxes, so there was lots of ad hoc fixing to be done with cardboard scavenged from the local market. Used up all 100m of the cheap sticky tape from Beijing, should be sweet.
The joy of Cyrillic! It’s like a megolamaniac dyslexic sign-writer has painted the town weird. Words almost make sense – Bank is like Bahk, Khan is Xaah – but some stuff gets tricky, like Khosgvol is written what looks like Xobcron, and i’m still not sure how to pronounce it.
What else? – Chinggis Khan vodka is divine. Three more unwatched episodes of season five the Wire, not sure when we’ll get round to that. 100,000 tugrugs stashed in my right shoe – don’t tell anyone … and a 17-, or maybe 27-hour bus ride to the first (western) Moron, apparently the buses drive “like crazy mouse”. sweet.
ah, Chinggis Khan and the sipper top vodka bottles.
you dont need maps – just look for the piles of vodka bottles as road markers.
Have a brilliant ride..
how far between the morons?