19^th August, Altai – Ulaanbaatar

Of course it was never going to be that easy. Within a hundred kilometres the miserable Hyundai diesel engine had given up. We all got out and bump started it, fully loaded, up a hill, twice, before stopping at a roadside village. They started dismantling the engine and tinkering but they had no idea how to fix it. When it became clear we were not moving on, we camped up for the night.

I was quite angry in the morning and I could foresee nothing but further trouble developing with the vehicle. I kept wishing we had just dumped the car at Altai and tortured myself with the thought that we could have been in Ulaanbaatar already. I was getting ill and could neither concentrate nor get comfortable. Jonno tried to talk with the drivers but I had retreated into myself and could no longer see the point. When a minibus for Ulaanbaatar arrived I jumped on with my bag. Jonno soon followed having got the phone number of one of the driver’s brothers.

We were now a day behind and would not arrive until the night of the 20th August. As we drove I got progressively more ill, having windy gut pain and the obvious associated symptoms. I could hardly keep myself upright but I needed to – to stop myself fainting onto the Mongolian in the neighbouring seat. Shaken around in this feverish state between sleep and consciousness, each bump was mirrored with a painful thought or reflection which circled mercilessly in my restless mind.

With barely a pause, we travelled right through the day and on into the night. Just after dusk we called in at a roadside ghur, which anyone uninitiated would have driven past, thinking it only a family home. However, the driver pulled up and all the passengers, including Jonno and I went inside. Everyone was served tea and offered a bowl of soup or a snack. When I declined, signalling I was ill, they offered me Vodka, recommending it as a remedy. I declined and retreated to a neighbouring ghur, where the driver had already taken a bed, to try and sleep a while.

Jonno woke me soon after, happy to have experienced more authentic Mongolian hospitalities, and we all got back in the bus. The driver slept for another half an hour in his seat, the minibus pulled only slightly off the road, but otherwise drove non-stop right through the night and the following day. By the afternoon I was over the worst and began making an effort to take in the view and observe my fellow passengers. The Mongolians seemed to have a curious attitude to the landscape. Throwing rubbish out of windows was perfectly acceptable being the ‘Mongolian national rubbish bin’. I have read that the steppe is suffering desertification, that grass and other life is diminishing. Whether or not this is true, the barrenness and harshness of the place was not only awe-inspiring, it gave me vertigo. I was so desperate to look down on the land, so overwhelmed by sickness and by the wide valleys and surrounding mountains, I felt I was in perpetual freefall and there was nothing to hold onto.

We arrived at our destination quite late and I felt as though I had landed at last, with a painless little bump. It had been a challenging trial but now we were through it. All I wanted was a wash and a bed. We still had to arrange the delivery of the car and it was the Rally’s closing party the following night. As we got off the bus, we emerged into an alien environment. Where there had been nothing but mercilessly open plain and distant mountains, we were now in what appeared to be a low budget Tokyo. Above us, hanging from several storey buildings, electric bill boards flickered while a circus of broken cars flew past.

An attractive young lady pulled at my arm. I was unsure of what it was all about and really more than anything I wanted a shower and a bed in a western hostel. We politely declined her help and started to look for Taxis but she persisted and Jonno finally deciphered that she was Cheq’s sister. It was remarkable that she had been able to find us and I still have no idea how many phone calls they must have made or how long they had waited. We followed her to where her friend was waiting in his car. He wore a red felt, pork pie hat and casually smoked a cigarette as he sped through the busy streets. It was a wonder the car functioned at all. It seemed as though the whole thing was being held together by magic. Hundreds of patch up jobs gradually converting the car into a fully personalised machine which, in the wrong hands, would simply break down again, refuse to work. He raced on along the main road and then darted up a muddy track, bordered by fences on each side. As we came into what must have been a main junction we circled a huge pile of rubbish and accelerated off up the opposite bank.

We stood for a moment beside a rough plank and pole fence that enclosed the suburban plot which was to be our home for the evening, thanked and shook hands with the driver and went inside to be introduced to the family. Cheq’s family house was not used in the summer, instead they lived in a ghur pitched in their yard. In addition to Cheq’s mother and father were his auntie and niece. Cheq’s father was a marvellous character. He had been a soldier in the Soviet days and had fought in Afghanistan. He was very proud to have fought for the Russians. His mother was quite stern and a little intimidating although she didn’t try to communicate much.

We looked at some photos and had some food before getting some much needed rest. During the night it began to rain quite heavily. It came through the canvas and soaked through the felt and we got wet. We moved the mattress and carried on sleeping. When we emerged from the ghur at dawn to pee, we saw the entire valley, as far as the eye could see, covered with similar little compounds with wooden fences and ghurs and not a single tree. All was grey and misty as if overexposed, with the odd bright spark of blue or red plastic. It was one of the most memorable views of the trip and one we are sure we shared with few westerners.

When we woke again we had some breakfast and relaxed for a while. Before we left we had a little photo shoot. Jonno dressed in a white fox fur hat. It was beautiful – caught in winter when hunting must have required remarkable endurance and skill.

Just before noon we got a taxi downtown where we had intended to have our photographs developed there and then so we could give copies to Cheq’s sister to take back to the family. Having already lost my camera in Kazakhstan we were resting all hopes on Jonno’s camera, whose screen had been faulty since the beginning of our trip. Our disappointment, particularly Jonno’s, was complete when we came to see that not only our photographs of the day were ruined but also our record of the crystal clear waters of the Kyrghiz lake and the numerous stops with local families or repairs. All reduced to ugly, abstract compositions of flat bands of colour like the broken screen.

It was a little difficult leaving Cheq’s sister as she was obviously upset that she would have no record of our meeting. The illusion of our western superiority and efficiency had been shattered.

After a short and silent walk we arrived at Sükhbaatar Square, Mongolia’s answer to Trafalgar Square. It was a little odd, with a huge, level, open space – one could imagine a bitter wind blowing across it much of the year – surrounded by a ring road and a series of dwarfing classically inspired Soviet buildings. At the head stood the Mongolian Government Building and in the centre of its strange arrangement of pillars and glass sat a massive monument of Genghis Khan, Temüjin, the Great Khan of the Mongol Hordes. Cast in cold, immovable, blackened brass he sat legs wide in an immortal and defiant pose. Not too dissimilar to the identical likenesses of Queen Victoria dotted around Britain and the empire. Perhaps better loved, Genghis’ image was not covered in pigeon poo.

Genghis is undoubtedly Mongolia’s most famous son. He was born to a relatively minor ruling family who belonged to a clan of herdsmen. From the steppe, through coalition and conquest, he built the largest land empire the world had seen. With the unprecedented speed, skill and tactics of his army, the Golden Horde grew to span from the Caspian Sea through to the Pacific, encompassing large parts of modern day Russia and China, and all within just twenty one years.

Mongolia has now fallen on humbler times, sandwiched between its two great neighbours, China and Russia. The Mongolian people seem to ally themselves strongly with Russia yet their identity as ‘Mongolians’ is inarguable. You may remember Cheq describing everything as “Mongolian traditional” this or “Mongolian national” that and Genghis is often used as the figurehead for this peculiar nationalism. His face can be found on benign and symbolic objects alike; on key rings, on vodka bottles and on bank notes. I was surprised to find his image used in such an objectified fashion not just for the tourists but also for the Mongolian people.

To the right of Genghis was a bizarre pillared structure. This was the Mongolian National Centre for Theatre, home to Dave’s Bar our finish line. It was to be a home away from home, offering fish and chips, German beer and fresh conversation with other teams. Dave’s Bar was tucked around the side of the building on the plinth, or stylobate, nestled behind a row of gigantic pillars. A number of Rally cars were parked outside in various stages of ruin. We climbed up to the plinth, passing a near immaculate mini with a union jack painted on the roof – we had arrived. We forgot about our lost car and enjoyed our first proper knees up in nearly a month. Finally, we had completed the challenge to which we had committed ourselves months before.

Cool, hoppy, ‘Khan Beers’ were ordered from the bar, a small wooden shed which lent the terrace a tropical feel as alien to it as a beach bar to a moon colony. Among the throng of excited ralliers who milled around between the tall, white, classically inspired columns, we soon bumped into ‘Team Sussex Best’. They were a quirky pair, Andrew and James. James was hilarious. He talked about a wonderful variety of nonsense and all at a hundred miles an hour. Andrew was also good company. Fortunately a little more reserved but clever and on top of it.

Andrew had driven into a river at full speed, letting water into the engine, causing the the engine to seize. They had spent a week repairing the ruined engine, living with a retired mechanic who lent them his garage and organised spare parts to be flown in from Ulaanbaatar. It was incredible that they had managed to fix such terrible damage. They had problems further down the road when tyres kept rupturing and they drove on their rims for miles. Dave, the owner of the bar, bought the totally destroyed wheels to use as plant pots and as far as I know they are still in use, sat proudly in front of the bar taps.

We then went over to check in at the hostel, ‘Nassan’s’. Nassan was wonderfully kind and had a beauty unsusual for a woman of her age, so much so that Jonno and I competed with each other to be the most polite to her. It was great to be settled again and to have a shower. Now we just had to get comfortable and wait for our car to arrive.
We got chatting to a man called Pat. He was from the Grand Canyon region in the US where he taught rafting. Pat had bought a Russian motorbike to travel around the country. It was impossible to buy a decent second-hand motorbike in Mongolia as they all get sold to family members and a stranger would never be offered one. So Pat had been forced to buy a brand new bike. It also seemed impossible to buy a decent new bike, the Russians only shipping the broken and defective models to Mongolia.

While testing the bike out, Pat found that when the cylinder heated up the piston jammed. He rectified this by sanding the piston down by hand. He was in for an interesting ride.

We took Pat along to the party. It was disappointing how few people had arrived in time and it lacked a buzz. The long and testing route across the centre of Mongolia had ruined more than just our own car. Many teams who had arrived on time, like us were having their cars delivered on lorries. Despite the drawbacks it was great to see Rupert, Jim, James and Adam. We also got to see Herwig and Jacob again. They had had a difficult time tackling the northern route through the roughest, most mountainous part of Mongolia. Whilst navigating a river they got stuck mid-course and had to be pulled out by a team of horses.

Rising/Falling – Always Hoping -can be bought online at Amazon.co.uk, - ordered by your local bookshop for just £8.74 (the price the team’s car was auctioned for at the end of the rally) Just note the ISBN:9780956196613 - or bought direct from the suppliers @ £10.99 (£8.74 plus £2.25 p&p) Address Cheques to Craig Chamberlain, Glovers Cottage, Lazonby, Penrith, CA10 1AJ