By Trudy

Bigger reaches

This morning Nico and Dirk first removed the inner tube, looked for a hole, patched it and put it back in. Job done and we have a good spare tire again.

After 4 days of driving and a difficult path, we finally get where we wanted to go. The town of Bigger.

Well: city, the horses are on ropes, the bank doesn’t give money and at the gas station you can’t pay with a card, because there is no internet. Luckily we still had a stack of Tugruks.

We decide to take a route that will take us to Russia a little faster and not take so much shortcuts anymore.

It was a good plan, but the first part of about 50 kilometers towards Altai is really not a good road. It’s terrible, the T-Ford bounces over the washboard, through sand and over bumps and through potholes. The Gibb River road is nothing compared to it. We are not complaining loudly, because we have chosen this route. It’s toward a gold mine. Maybe we’ll find a nugget.

There is a car on the side of the “road” with a flat tire. We know what that feels like, with the difference that we have all the tools we need to change a tire with us. We’ll just play the – roadside assistance men – and make this Mongolian very happy.

When we passed the mine we enjoyed the beautiful mountains we drove past and through and found an abandoned winter camp.

It is a fairly flat area and a beautiful place.

The only disadvantage was that it is covered with goats and sheep droppings. I’m not used to camping and cooking food on shit. It went well and it was very nice to be in such a beautiful circle at the bottom of one of the sacred mountains of Mongolia.

Bigger is known for its wine and we had bought two bottles to celebrate reaching the city. The first one we tasted was really undrinkable.

After dinner we go up the mountain and offer grain and think about our wishes. I then offered the rest of the wine as well. That didn’t take much effort.