Tag Ulaanbataar

Having finished the official aspects of the rally our convoy of nine set about enjoying the lovely city of Ulaan Bataar, which ralliers refer to as UB. While on our previous visit in 2007 to Mongolia we thought UB was a dust-covered wasteland that looked more like a Russian prison camp than a city. By 2010 the city had taken on new charm and was decorated in bright, flashing lights and paved sidewalks, with only the occasional dust storm. Buildings being demolished in 2007 had made way for newer, safer looking structures and even a 5 star hotel. We were impressed with the upgrades.

The convoy, having enjoyed its finish line party until late, was led by yours truly to the only hotel that would accept nine drunk ralliers at 3:00am without a deposit, the Miami Hotel. This was conveniently located near the finish line bar, so a parade of dirty ralliers stumbled from the bar to the Miami, singing and cheering their own accomplishments on the rally. We settled into the hotel and, in the morning, discovered it wasn’t a hotel but a brothel. I talked with the reception personal in a mix of Russian and Chinese to discover they didn’t particularly want us shutting down business, which our presence apparently was. We packed up that morning and spent a few hours wandering around with our luggage looking for a hotel. None were to be had, UB was booked. We returned to the brothel for another evening and, despite their looks of dismay, the 90 year old receptionist allowed us our previous rooms.

After securing accommodation for the night we set about securing food for our desperately hungry bellies. A Chinese restaurant around the corner had peaked our interest, so we spent a few hours gorging ourselves until even the Irish were unable to eat another bite. We shopped, dined and then, heading back to Miami, we got ready to hit the town for an epic Saturday evening.

We returned to the Finish Line party to meet more ralliers who were streaming into the city daily. We ran into some of the same teams we’d been bumping into across the steppe. An ambulance we thought had died 200 miles back appeared in the parking lot that evening, with all of the occupants alive and well– a surprise to many of us. One lad did injure himself trying to do fire walking while drunk, but aside from that their injuries were only psychological. It was a great sense of finality and completion to be at the Finish line while other teams came in, to hear their amazing stories and to see their dust-covered faces and starved stomaches as they smiles from ear-to-ear and cheered their arrival at the finish line.

We went to the car auction downtown to see what became of our donated rally cars. We discovered that the cars are auctioned in ‘as-is’ status to the highest bidder in a public arena. Pictures of the cars and their basic facts are put on a powerpoint slide and displayed to a throng of bidders. Most cars were selling for anywhere between $1,000 USD – $1,500 USD, despite the fact that most cars were also in a dire state of disarray. We learned that cars are one of Mongolia’s chief imports and sell for much higher than they would in the US or Europe. We don’t know, yet, what our little Citroen Saxo sold for, or if it was sold at all. Some cars apparently become the property of the owners of the various drop-off points. We found this out by visiting several of the drop-offs and seeing cars from the ’08 and ’09 rallies sitting, stripped of parts, in the parking areas. It was sad to see some rally cars cast off like that, knowing the epic adventures people went through to get them to Mongolia.

We spent the next several days shopping for gifts for family and supporting sponsors, as well as taking pictures, enjoying our last days as a convoy family, and preparing to head in our own separate directions. It was sad when the first of our group had to depart, the convoy felt broken and at a loss. It was hardest to say goodbye to the Norwegians who had so heroically saved several teams from demise by allowing them (and all their gear) to be loaded into the Fiat and carried to UB, despite the fact that they risked not finishing at all by carrying so much weight in their car for everyone else. We’ll miss Aslan and Bear! It was also hard to say goodbye to the two Irish. One from the north, and opinionated like a radio talk show host, the other from the south and as vocal and witty as a salesman. It was rough leaving the Aussie giant as well, who had grown close to Mike and developed a great giant-chiwawa relationship. Slowly, the convoy drifted in different directions towards Europe while Mike and I drifted towards China and Bill caught a flight back to the USA.

The Citroen Saxo was literally breaking in half. Our previous day’s welding was only a band aid on the larger fact that the frame was splitting in half, right down the middle. We had already removed all excess weight, and were riding with the three lightest people in our car, Mike, Lauren and Chris– a man from Southern Ireland who had a pension for story telling.

All of us expected a hard ride ahead, but after the welding at the last drop off point, we were riding in high spirits and having a blast. Chris jumped on the roof of our Citroen and rode, zip-tied to the roof, for over an hour. Watching the sunset behind us as we raced for the finish line, it was a highlight of the entire trip. 9 people in high spirits with the future ahead and trials an tribulations already behind us. Even if the cars exploded and died on the spot our mood couldn’t be ruined. Watching the sun set, with our cars weaving in and out of the light, our roofs covered in screaming and ecstatic ralliers, we were euphoric. We had less than 500 miles to go, and 200 of those miles would be on hard pavement, we learned. We were almost home free!

As the roads worsened (and we had heard roomers that they got worse before they got better) we noticed new sounds emanating from the Citroen. We took out even more weight, and only Chris and Mike were left in the car. Lauren rode with the Norwegians, Bill with the Aussie in his Suzuki Swift. What happened next was as unfortunate, but still proved interesting. Somehow, driving through the night, the Norwegian car got separated from the group. I was in that car, and we reached the pavement around 2:00am. we looked around, eager to celebrate the end of the bumpy roads, but the other two cars were long gone. We didn’t know if they were ahead of us or behind. After taking a vote, we decided to wait on the edge of the pavement until morning. I didn’t sleep at all, and at first light I was flagging down cars with messages scribbled on bits of trash. I asked each driver to take a note to the cars if they saw them ahead. The notes just had our location and the time. I showed the drivers pictures of the missing cars on my camera and then waved them off. By mid-morning a Chinese driver told me he’d seen two red cars broken down about 50 miles ahead of us on the pavement. We all jumped in the car and were ready to pull out when, from behind us, the Suziki Swift pulled up and Bill and the Aussie jumped out. They reported that the Citroen Saxo, the fearless ATC car, was finally dead. It had died during the night sometime, the engine having seized, the oil and gas filters both filled with dust and sand. It wouldn’t even turn over. It was scrap metal, they reported. Mike and Chris were back with the Citroen trying to get a tow from a passing trucker. Meanwhile, and to double the trouble, the Swift had a leak in the gas can. I jumped in the Swift to translate (in case they spoke Chinese) and we rushed to the next drop-off town some half hour down the road. The Norwegians went back for the ATCs dead car.

With the Swift, we had the gas tank patched and called the Adventurists’ contact in the city to report that the ATC car was on its way. The contact arrived, a lovely vegetarian, Christian lady– a double oddity in Mongolia. The Swift headed back to pick up the Norwegians and the dead ATC car. Meanwhile, she took pity on me, as I was pitiful, and took me to her vegetarian restaurant. She made me lunch and I ate with her and her family. She then dropped me in free room at her upstairs hotel. I napped for four hours. When I woke up she made me tea and talked to me about becoming a vegetarian. To be honest, it was surreal. Finally, as dusk was approaching, I heard the three cars pull up and my 8 team mates jumped out and we began to rip the ATC car apart. We sold a lot of the interior goods to the vegetarian and her husband. The rest we had to trash. We put four in the Swift and 5 in the Norwegian Fiat (some on the roof). That night was the last party for the finish line and it had long been a goal of ours to make the party. The Norwegians put their foot to the floor and we were bumping along behind the Swift as fast as possible.

It was midnight before we reached Ulaan Bataar. We saw it in the distance, an orange glow in the sky up ahead, and cheered. In the Swift, Phil the Aussie, Mike, Chris the Irish and I were all choking on the horrible smell from Chris’ shoes. It was so vile that Phil eventually slammed on the breaks, in sight of the city and the finish line goal, and threatened to toss the shoes. He even pledged his last beer to wash them out, anything to kill the smell. I’ll admit, it was rank. But with the city so close, it wasn’t that big a deal. It was hilarious to watch Phil stomp around as he got Chris’ shoes and tied them to the roof, before peeling out and re-joining traffic.

In town, we were all euphoric about finally reaching our goal. Bill crawled on the roof of the Norwegian’s car and, not surprisingly, they were pulled over by the Mongolian police and warned. The Swift didn’t wait to see the punishment. Chris was driving and he took that moment to admit he didn’t have a driver’s license and the car wasn’t registered to him! We panicked. The odds of not getting pulled over for a bribe or minor offense were extremely low. Nevertheless, we forged ahead looking for the finish line. Bill crawled back on the roof of the car and was pulled over yet again, this time within sight of the finish line. The cops were not as friendly this time, they took Aslan, the Norwegian driver, and kept his passport, setting a disciplinary meeting for the next morning.

We jumped across the finish line to see only one other team sitting around. They reported that the finish line party was over. There was no one around but the cops who had arrested Aslan, which put a sour taste in our mouths since we were, after all, here to donate a ton of money and cars. We walked around town for a while, eventually returning to the bar near the finish line. We met up with a few other teams around 2:00am and had a nice time celebrating our finish.

Looking around at the other cars in the finish line holding pen, we were happy to see friend’s cars from along the route, including the Face Race team and Mongol Schumachers, both of whom we caravanned with for the first half of the rally. It was like seeing an old friend to see their cars there.

43 days on the road, 10,000+ miles and we had finally made it to the finish line. Sure, some of us were arrested, one of our cars didn’t make it, one passport was missing and we had no where to go for the night, but we were happy and excited to have made it across 1/3 of the globe by land.

Next– ATC spends a week in Ulaan Bataar… why?

After leaving the Aussie mining camp we hit the road hard, trying to make up time and cover ground since we’d been relaxing for two days at the camp. We were nearly spoiled by the warm showers, hot food and great entertainment on the mining compound, and it was a sad moment piling back into the dirty cars and hitting the road. That night, we made it quite far and shockingly without incident. We even found a decent hotel to stay in, only our second hotel for the entire trip. Since our tent was ruined and still dripping wet from the rain storm two days ago, we were out of other options. The hotel was nice enough, and a friendly Mongolian lady helped translate for us and dinned on eggs and potatoes with our caravan.

The next morning we found the mechanic’s shop– a small garage on the outskirts of town, and had them set about welding our back end. Since we had too much weight in the car over unstable and bumpy roads, the frame in the back of the car literally split in two. The tires were rubbing on the wheel wells, and the back right tire had already worn through the gas line. The mechanics took the entire day welding in a bar across the trunk, separating and pushing back the two sides of the car and playing a round of darts between each act. We had literally run the thing into breaking in half. They patched the gas line and we were ready to roll. Unfortunately, it was already late evening by the time we got away from the mechanics. The rest of the caravan had waited patiently the entire day. Now we had a problem. Our car couldn’t support the weight it was carrying. We dumped everything we owned on the ground and began selling things to anyone who walked by. the tires fetched $25. Our expensive tent got us a return of about $15. Food, games, books, clothing, supplies, car parts– everything was dumped in the trash or sold. We put the remainder, our three personal bags, in the back of the Norwegian’s car, and we put three lighter weight people in the Citroen Saxo to keep the weight down even more. We were still riding low and it was only a matter of time before the gas line was rubbed raw again.

It was going to be a rough trip to the capital, this we could already see. The caravan was patient with our pathetic situation, and Aslan the Norwegian even offered to carry the people if we could all go through our supplies and leave what wasn’t necessary. They tossed stuff from their car, selling the spare battery, the sound system, all unnecessary food, etc. They were serious about keeping everyone safe. Once you get a challenge in a Norwegian’s head, it’s as good as achieved. They were determined to get us all to the finish line.

While the mechanics were ignoring/working on our car, the caravan filled the hours by shopping for traditional Mongolian dress, which most of us bought (our team excluded since we were broke after the car repairs). Everyone looked dashing in their Mongolian garb. We set off down the road only to encounter a massive hill crossing right out of the gates. The car made it to the top before the gear linkage popped out again.

Come back one more time to see if we make it to Ulaan Bataar! In the next episode– the end of the rally!