Day Twenty-One – Bayanchandmani to UlaanBaatar

We make it back to the big city! A nice light breezy 66km jaunt south, our first two proper encounters with Mongolia’s fabled wild dogs (actually:overly pavlov’d dogs) who come fuming onto the highway snapping at my heels, I’m trying to kick it in the head and keep pedaling, Tama gets a rock thrown while riding and weaving all over the road, fun times. From about 20k’s out the industrial and suburban sprawl is intense – real Arthur Rimbaud stuff:

“Nothing rich. – The city! From the desert of bitumen, flee in headlong flight with the sheets of fog spread in frightful bands across the sky, the sky that bends, recedes, descends, formed by the most sinister black smoke that Ocean in mourning can produce, flee helmets, wheels, boats, rumps …”

etc. Lots of trucks, traffic, signs in english, white people, steaks, fresh fruit, a room with mattress’d beds and a toilet that flushes, a (zombie voice) Maaattt Daaamon DVD where Jason Bourne kills baddie Americans in Iraq, apple juice, drinking and actually pissing rather than just sweating and sweating, good times. Fall asleep with UlaanBaltimore in a heatwave outside our window, the sounds of kids playing basketball slowly crossfading with the noise of drunk men smashing bottles. I dream that me and Tama have finished our trip, which is the same thing as Nic finishing his novel, we’re on a pointy island in Halong Bay, Laura is complaining that Nic hasn’t actually finished his novel, which means that we haven’t actually finished Moron to Moron; sitting in Tom Phat cafe with Laura and Shell, Shell is astounded that I can laugh and joke and make small talk, that this trip hasn’t permanently frazzled my brain. Wake up feeling nice and refreshed and ready for five or six more days of craziness on the way east to the final Moron. But first: a rest day. oh yeah …