Exploring Mongolia by motorcycle - Episode 1

In this series... My mind spins off and I am on derail, derail Just, just try... This is the... Just try... Try it in the morning. Just try... This one was on the bucket list. Welcome to Mongolia. I got a message from the guys at Moto Nomad Rally in Mongolia, and they were like, we know you like riding solo, but would you be interested in coming to the Mongolian Moto Nomad Rally? And they had met in Mongolia. But they said, you can do the rally solo. So it's not like a rally race where it's timed, but it's just getting from one point to the other. More like those classic car rallies, or even the ones that you have to buy a thousand dollar junk car and try and survive to the end. Which is a little similar here, because the motorbike we're using, that everybody's using, is $900. So basically how it works, there's a GPX file with some rough guidelines and places each night you sort of camp near. You don't have to camp with everybody else, but you can camp near. And you can also, besides me doing it solo, you can do it with groups, or there is a support vehicle right at the back. If you're having some trouble, they say you can just hang out with them, and they'll help you through as well. But it's very unsupported. But you get the support if, you know, you get flat tyres, if you can't fix them, or there's an issue, there's a mechanic there. But basically, go and have a great day. Meet up if you want at the end, and just keep riding around Mongolia. The basic route starts a few hours outside the capital, and then we head north-west up around, up to, there's a quite famous lake up in the north, it's massive. Then make our way back. I'm excited for this one, so let's get into it. The rally started just outside the town of Tesileg, which was nestled at the base of a beautiful mountain range. We stayed in Gurz, the Mongolian word for years. And as the last of the light faded from the surrounding landscape, I was starting to get excited of what tomorrow, and the next few weeks, would bring. Morning. It is, I believe, 10 degrees here. And we're about to start the rally. Lucky we don't have to go too far, because the start line is out to Gurz. Not going to start too early, because it's not the longest day. A bit of road to start with, and then we're onto the Gurz. While the sun was thinking about rising, I packed my bags onto the bike. Two panniers and a back bag for my camping gear, as a lot of the nights, I'd be camping in the wild. As the sun was now up, I thought, no time like the present to start this adventure. I did a quick loop by the Gurz as I thought it would be only fitting to pass the start line. I made my way out of the campsite, and headed across the open plain, towards the town. I was going to be heading in a north-westerly direction for most of the day. I rode through the town of Testerleg. The style of buildings reminded me of the country to the north of here, Russia. I'd made it over the small pass, and again something I'd noticed when flying in, how green this place is. Most people probably think of Mongolia as mainly desert, due to the Gobi Desert in the south. But as I flew in, it was green as far as the eye could see. And something else I noticed was the amount of dirt tracks everywhere, which I was super keen to explore. Just pulled over to go over the bags on the bike, just to make sure they're all strapped down properly. Obviously I haven't ridden a bike like this before, so... Attachment points, I've just got to check to make sure everything's secure, because you don't want to lose something in the middle of here. I've heard a story of someone losing their passport out here. So, everything seems to be strapped down. The landscape's here. It's another place that's insane, and one of the reasons I wanted to come here. It'd be so green. This highway goes for a bit. I think it's about 140 kilometres. Then we get onto the dirt. I think the whole route, there's only about 10% sealed roads. The rest is all the fun stuff. I can hear the weirdest sound in the grass. I wonder if it's grasshoppers? I'm not sure what that is. Right, back on the bike. There doesn't seem to be fences here, so I'm expecting a lot of animals to be on the roads and tracks. There was a line up for fuel, even though the fuel station was not open. Had to pull over again, as the landscapes remind me of, what is it? The Windows operating system out of the 90s. But, it's a lot better. It's so green. There was a long section of sealed road next. But, I'd already got a taste of the dirt. As yesterday, at the camp, after getting my hands on the motorcycle, I had a chance to do a bit of a shakedown, to get used to how the bike handles. Work out what was good about the bike, and what things I'd need to watch out for when riding the bike. Also, it would be good to get a bit of a sample of what the terrain might be like on the rally. And, as always, any excuse to go for a ride on any motorbike. I caught up with some of the other guys on the rally, Mikey, Andrew and Chris, from Western Australia. So, we rode together for a while. I soon worked out the main track in front of me may not always be the track that was used to create the GPX file. There were many track options. As I gather every winter, a lot of the tracks would be covered in snow. So, in the spring, they may be creating new tracks. So, the GPX file would just have to be a loose guide. We got to a water crossing, which would be good to test the bike in. Well, I'm glad I brought taller, waterproof motorcycle boots. They definitely help keep your feet dry. The bike was quite light feeling and easy to control. Let's say, very throwable. Like a big posty bike. We were riding until what we were told was a hot spring. It was quite surprising to see so much development in the middle of nowhere. We checked it out and then I headed back. As the other guys wanted to keep exploring. I definitely like this kind of terrain. Let's say, there's not a lot of suspension travel on this bike. I stopped on the top of the ridge. As a view down into the next valley was pretty insane. I came across a couple who needed some help with a few hand gestures. I worked out they needed a spark pod spanner. I turned to get my toolkit but realized I didn't have any of my gear with me. So now I had to explain I was useless and forgot my tools. But there were two guys on bikes coming with just hand gestures. The guy didn't seem that impressed with me. It was a good shakedown. The bike definitely has its limits but there was a reason we were riding these bikes and it's in the name of the rally. The whole country of Mongolia is full of nomad farmers and this is the bike nearly all of them use. It's simple, very easy to fix, reliable, built tough and above all very cheap at $900 US dollars. Basically built for purpose. So, if the farmers can get anywhere with these bikes we should have no problems at all. Back traveling along the sealed road there was green rolling hills and lots of animals everywhere. These birds were massive. I gather they were vultures but these guys had feathers on their heads unlike most vultures so I'm not 100% sure if they are vultures. I rode through a small town which only had houses on each side of the road. No side streets. It reminded me that this is how every town, village and city started. Just a single street that expanded from there. To the right I saw what looked like a canyon. There was a dirt track so I went to investigate. As I rode up here I could start to see this rather large canyon river coming through here so I thought I'd have a look. And these are literally the type of places I'm going to pull over and camp at. It's looking promising. Stunning. I don't know if you can get down the bottom there's a really cool green patch down there. It looks like it might actually get better up here. I'll keep going around having a look. This is pretty spectacular. I rode along the edge until I came to a bend in the canyon which was even more spectacular. I came upon a nomad farmer where I was having fun exploring. He was probably working heading to his herd. I made it to a town and this was the line up for fuel. I worked out there was a line up for motorbikes. So after about 25 minutes of waiting I was able to fill up. I rode through the town until I came to a checkpoint where there was a small fee for I guess a road toll. So I made it to the first fuel stop. The fuel coming into my goal in Maine comes from Russia and there's a lack of supply so there was long lines. It took me about 10 minutes to find a fuel station I could get into and then about 25 to get fuel. From here on for the next 4 days is dirt. So all the good stuff starts. It's going to be camping I think it's probably another 60km or so to where we're roughly going to camp tonight. We can camp anywhere but the organisers said there's a really good spot here and that's what we'll probably do. This valley itself is really spectacular too. So this feels like it's a real start of getting into the say backcountry of Mongolia. The first section looked like they were building a new road. Then to my right there was a lava flow and straight ahead probably the reason for the lava flow. A volcano. This is the Khorgo volcano which erupted about 9000 years ago and is now extinct. You can actually hike up to the rim. I rode over the next crest where a massive lake appeared. The lake is 16km long and varies between 4 and 10km wide. It covers an area of 61km 10 rivers flow into the lake and only one the Saman river flows from the lake. Seeing this was the first river crossing and I was by myself I thought it best to do the sensible thing and check the water depth. It wasn't much more than about a foot or two deep so it should be fine on this bike. The other side was a little wet and chewed up but soon I was back on a dual track again. There was another climb. As I approached the top I stopped and had a look back down towards the water and the valley floor. Absolutely stunning. And over the next crest well, another incredibly beautiful landscape. I came upon another water crossing on the valley floor but beside it was a small bridge. There's no need to make these things more difficult than they are so I took the bridge. To finally be able to stand in a place you've seen in National Geographic magazines as a child. To immerse myself into a country a landscape that I'd wondered about for all this time was almost surreal. I'm not sure if there's anything more iconically Mongolian than riding along a dual track through green grasslands with mountains in the distance. A bit about the country I'm riding across. Mongolia is landlocked between China and Russia. It is about 1.56 million square kilometres and is the 18th largest country in the world. It has a population of around 3.5 million people with about half of them living in the capital of Ulaanbaatar. It is the world's most sparsely populated country with 2.2 people per square kilometre. So that actually means I've ridden in the three most sparsely populated countries in the world as Australia is second with 3.5 people per square kilometre and Namibia is in third with 3.7 people per square kilometre. The summers here are warm like it is now. The winters get extremely cold often dropping below minus 40 degrees Celsius and it even reaches down to minus 58 degrees Celsius occasionally. The trail started to disappear and I was nowhere near the GPX vial so more paddock bashing was required. I went across one more wide open valley floor then the track started to head into a small mountain range. Just pulled over from that last little section gone from all those green fields into a little rockier a lot more fun. And now there's a lot more trees so it's changed again. So I'm not too far from where they've marked the campsite. You can camp anywhere but they've marked it so they probably think it's the best one around here so may as well go check it out. Get back on the bike and let's do this last little leg. The trail started to descend quite rapidly it was getting a little rougher and more fun. This track had a few washed out channels where the runoff from the rains had caused channels running across and sometimes down the track. And the bike surprisingly was handling the trails pretty well. I had made my way down from the top of the pass and entered another valley. Not too far along I could see a pin on the map where the first campsite was. So I made my way towards it. There wasn't really a trail that I could see, it was more like paddock bashing. A lot of big divots and some rather large rocks which I was trying to avoid. I came to a beautiful stream. I was about 30 metres away from the pin on the map of the campsite. So I thought I may as well check out the exact spot that was marked. Well, they definitely know how to pin a campsite. This is epic. The last sections reminded me of going through California up into Oregon and that. All the pine trees, it's spectacular. I think I've found my campsite. Don't have to really try too many. It's about 4pm or just a bit past I think. I haven't seen any of the other riders so yeah, I'm not sure what they were doing. I stopped a lot so we will see. Remembered how to do it. Tent's all set up and all the gear's off. The bike. Just noticed we've got a little bridge on the side. Moment of truth. Going to see how cold this water is. Oh! It is fresh. They're kind of fresh when as soon as you put your feet in your skin starts to burn. It's a little bit of rock quality I might be able to get in. It is extremely cold. I then saw this guy on the bank. Not sure what type of bird it was but from the shine on its feathers it looked like it probably spends its time in the water fishing. But I could be way off with that idea. Didn't really get a chance to eat much on the road but I did stop at the supermarket and get this. I'm not sure what it is. Looks a bit like a cookie or something. See what it tastes like. It's a cookie. The sun's about to go over the other side of the little valley here so very soon it will probably cool right off. Just drying out the pants because they got a little wet going through a couple of water crossings. Boots, socks were dry though so the water didn't get above the boots so it wasn't too deep. Then seemingly out of nowhere these two appeared. Thank you. Two young girls randomly came from the other side across the log through the forest and they're collecting flowers. I don't know where they've come from or where they're going but yeah. There's some rather big wild mushrooms. I'm not going to try and taste any of them because most of them, well you never know what's going to take you out or not. The two girls continued on collecting flowers as they moved down the valley. Starting to cool off and I've basically done nothing since I've been swimming. A few more people have rocked up. They're camping a bit further over. I think there's been one bike drowned out there somewhere and someone may have hurt an ankle or something. I haven't got all the information yet but there's a couple of guys from their state troopers I think they're state troopers, police in Alaska so I've just told them to come over. There's some more space up here so see if these guys rock up. Josh and John from Alaska did rock up and then a whole bunch of others. Also Andrew from Western Australia who I'd ridden with on the shakedown ride. He was the guy who drowned his bike which means it went underwater and needed to be drained before trying to start it again and it looked like he was attempting to do it again. John's got us a little fire going. We've had to tell him to get further away from the tent than he was desiring. He wanted it right next to it but better minds prevailed and we got him about 5 metres away. But he has got it going. I'm very grateful. Not only can John make a fire, I forgot my gloves. Well I left in my helmet where I always use them but I used another helmet so they're still in the other helmet in Australia. So I went to a little supermarket and I was going to look like Michael Jackson but John kindly had a spare pair of gloves so I don't look that silly. Watch series 8 of Survivor will you? This fire might be getting a lot bigger. Like a lot bigger. I think I may need to move my tent. Hopefully that's the last log. It is. Well, the first day riding in Mongolia was really good. It's magical. You've got these ideas of what it might be like. I try to not have any preconceptions of what it might be like but you always do. But it definitely delivered those, just those green rolling hills and the tracks and I'd say dual tracks but they could have been 16 at the time I guess when it rains people divide up the cars they come through in. We have a fire going, the river's running so there'll be river noise tonight to fall asleep to. And tomorrow I'm going to try and get out early again, probably on dawn just to get up so it's a lot easier to relax in the afternoon than come in right at the end trying to set up tent and be exhausted. So I'll probably be riding most of the day by myself again tomorrow. So we'll, yeah, we'll see what tomorrow brings. But for now, sit by campfire and go to bed. We sat by the campfire getting close to calling a night until some young local Mongolians on horseback rode past then turned back. They crossed the river to come say hi. I wonder if this is the Mongolian mountain equivalent of young guys cruising around in their cars when they first get their licence. John from West Australia asked if he could jump on, communicating with hand gestures. What number are you? Does the horse have a name? I'm John, horse. I don't think the guy had a clue what John was trying to ask. So a random group of Mongolian guys on horseback came through and it's pretty dark here at the moment. They've just come over to say hi. Lots of interesting things. I thought we were going to bed. Finally, we called it a night. In the next episode, I head deeper into the Mongolian backcountry. I get chased by a dog. I cross more streams and ride into more spectacular valleys. The track I follow disappears and I end up at a magical lake.