Off the Road

The total eclipse was amazing! We watched it from a pass, mountains all around and an Owoo (stone pile) next to us and had a fantastic view. It's so strange, this sudden darkness and the ring of light around the moon. Just before that we were invited into a jurte and drank a nice milk product from some animal... we couldn't find out from which. People around here are Kazakh, so the Mongolian dictionary doesn't help. And they don't speak Russian either.

To get a few more seconds of the eclipse we rode about 30km off the main "road". After about 5km I regretted having had this idea.. lots of sand, deep gravel. I was more sliding than driving. But we were rewarded with a beautiful camp site next to a river in a wide valley with yaks, goats, camels, horses, quite a few jurts, not too curious people, an eagle above our heads and many many other birds of prey. At this nice spot we waited for the eclipse day to come, were extremely lazy and changed our tires. Hooray. Since then riding the bikes is at least 200times more fun. Michelin T63 - we'll see how long they last, but now they are perfect.

We'll do some food shopping here back in Oelgij and then head towards Chovd, past the Gobi desert and onwards to Ulanbator, which is about 1400km from here. Of which 1000km are without asphalt.