West Mongolia

Wow wow wow, its beautiful. Nice road on the russian part of the border. The mongolian side instantly changes to gravel and sometimes offroad feeling.

Countryside is beautiful. Starts like Kazhakstan but with mountains. Every now and then the road disappears and we can just follow directions of our Navi. Yes, we have navigation in nowhere 😀 Its big fun when the voice says “in 500m turn right” but there is absolutely no road to be seen! But its working.

People here are poor and bored. Everyone tries to stop you and asks for cigarettes or axle grease. A lot of UAZ driving here. Almost 50% of the cars. Finally its the best car here, because its easy to fix and it goes everywhere. Next time i will paint my car grey and it will look like some nomads car. Now it looks like an alien in this bright colors. Some alien that might have money. 🙁

From travel guides I read a lot about Mongolia and expected some things. Sadly, this travel guides were written with a lot of optimism. Especially what they write about people here. Sometimes we get the impression, they dont like tourists. Except if they want to buy something. That seems to be OK.
So we try to stay away from huts and houses. Enjoy the country. Ignore tourist traps.

^^ Its cold in the mountains!

^^ found a big chunk of coal on the road. Nice for cooking 🙂

^^ New roads in a lot of places. This helps Mongolia to fight their hundreds of parralel dirt tracks. Sometimes there are 20 and more lanes in the dirt. The average dirt track width here is 160m! Instead of 10m a normal road needs…