Gosh Agash!

As ever with this trip, no time to dwell on absent friends, we were heading to Mongolia. From Onguday we had a fairly pain free bus ride deeper into the Altai Republic. We'd heard some eye brow raising stories about the inhabitants of Altai, 'a massive bunch of drunks': but from the window of the bus all we saw was beautiful, wild forests and the unstoppable siberian rivers carving their way through ancient mountains. Arriving in Kosh Agash - the last main town on the Russian side of the border - felt like we had reached the end of the earth or the set of 'Mad Max'. Te place was frontiersville, piled high with rubbish with many a local staggering down one of the 2 streets, wrecked by 10am. Not a whole lot to do in this town....

Our next problem was how to cross the border. We didn't have to wait long as about half an hour after arriving at a hotel we had a knock at the door. A rough looking Mongolian dude stood there and from what we could work out in broken Russian was looking for passengers over the border the following day. Agreeing to join him on the 2 hour trip we shook a mighty hand and decided to get our heads down on a REAL BED for the first time in nearly 2 weeks. amen.

As promised at 8am we were collected by our new Mongolian friend in a rather tidy ex-Russian army jeep. This was to be our first introduction to Mongolian scheduling. About 4 hours later we were still sat parked up in front of the market as our driver tried in vain to fill the remaining seat in the jeep. Eventually another red faced mongol chap ambled over jumped in and away we went...well after our driver converted half our fare into cartons of cheap cigarettes.

The landscape got more and more barren and settlements fizzled out altogether as we headed east. Tashanta, the last and border town in Russia was fairly quiet to say the least. At 1pm the border was closed for lunch so we parked up and waited. As we waited a couple if Italian cyclists pulled up (cycled from Europe of course) and lo and bloody behold three cars with British number plates! Unbeknownst to us the Mongol Rally car race had begun three weeks previously and the contestants were starting to dribble into Mongolia in their sub 500 hundred pound, 1 litre cars.

Eventually we made it into the immigration office and got our valuable stamps before bundling back in the jeep. It became apparent at this stage that the driver's mate was completely soused, and began toasting Mongolia furiously with neat vodka as we neared the physical border. A Russian border guard opened the barrier and waved us on as we waved goodbye to Russia, and goodbye to the tarmac!