We woke up to the power to the entire town being off. This was no big deal except that if you did not notice this and left your room you were then locked out with the key card like Wolfgang. That would be ok except the staff then had to search around for 20 min to find the skeleton key to let him back in. Breakfast was 1 cold fried egg on a slice of dry bread and luke warm tea. The other issue of course is the gas pumps don't work either. We finally got out of there about 945.


https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4340/...15c6724d_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_ by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

We headed out of town north to Ulaangom in 218 km.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4356/...9ab5eccf30.jpgScreen Shot 2017-08-09 at 21.18.46 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

The first few km are under construction and is a good firm gravel road.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4353/...b40ed836_b.jpgUlummgon by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4380/...f3b69111_b.jpgUlummgon-2 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4412/...0fb1e742_b.jpgUlummgon-3 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

Then there is about 25 km to the next town Norjinkhairhan where they had a working pump to fill up. Unlike Russia they get the concept of the fill up here and then give you gas and then you pay. In Russia you give them cash or the number of liters you want if you use Visa and then they turn on the pump. This creates long waits as everyone has to go in twice. There is 40 km of tarmac in total and this ends at the bridge to Bayankhoshuu.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4390/...4d3b1ccf_b.jpgUlummgon-4 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4353/...c837bc66_b.jpgUlummgon-5 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4339/...115a3a73_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-5 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4392/...cc52da61_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-2 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4346/...ea616dd8_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-7 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

Initially the road was good gravel for 5 km and then slightly looser.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4400/...8014c068_b.jpgUlummgon-7 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4435/...424b8322_b.jpgUlummgon-8 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4442/...21964f71_b.jpgUlummgon-9 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4412/...cbc60b2b_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-3 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4389/...cd5a2eee_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-4 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

The next 50 km to Uglii (number two) was more challenging with a lot of sand. When it was very deep we would go off the tracks to the grass, but you have to watch out for large rocks and the occasional crevasse.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4395/...205115b0_b.jpgUlummgon-10 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4407/...0d90dd58_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-8 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4341/...8c16da6b_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-9 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4399/...049ec61d_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-10 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4370/...c28bfcdd_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-11 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4393/...156f0d9d_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-12 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4341/...b7cb62e8_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-13 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4405/...50c89c20_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-14 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

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https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4432/...f0da292d_b.jpgUlummgon-15 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4372/...b3e5139e_b.jpgUlummgon-16 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4434/...014f865d_b.jpgUlummgon-17 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4428/...0543ecee_b.jpgUlummgon-18 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4359/...bc1817ee_b.jpgUlummgon-19 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4406/...f97d30d7_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-15 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4358/...40db597f_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-16 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

The lunch stop as usual took an hour to get food and so we did not leave there until 4. Here we met 2 riders and got the scoop on the routes ahead. For us now the next 100 km the road gets slowly better. Unfortunately it is not the same for them.


https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4356/...f18dfc9a_b.jpgUlummgon-23 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4437/...4a777f41_b.jpgUlummgon-24 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4404/...20f8b6b3_b.jpgUlummgon-25 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr


https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4417/...a4c7e816_b.jpgUlummgon-28 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr


https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4383/...60585c15_b.jpgIMG_9390 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4348/...7d764117_b.jpgIMG_9391 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4390/...84cbbd58_b.jpgIMG_9392 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

Leaving the town initial you pass by the lake and the tracks are pretty sandy, but once you pass about 10 km it gets a bit better. And then it gets sandy again, but you can blaze across the grass lands. We had all kinds of terrain this afternoon thin sand, deep sand, grass, rocky wash outs, hard mud road, and gravel.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4400/...c5b85302_b.jpgUlummgon-30 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4421/...1764bed2_b.jpgUlummgon-31 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flick

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4414/...998a4a3e_b.jpgUlummgon-34 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4340/...01a2f117_b.jpgUlummgon-35 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4360/...2fe03ce8_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-17 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4399/...6eedf318_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-18 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4385/...8b98657d_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-19 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4348/...0220389d_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-20 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

At one point Dan and I took the right track and the guys who were ahead had taken the left. They went on two sides of a hill. We saw a big herd of camels on our route. One we passed the hill it was grassland as far as you could see. This local biker blew past us on our track and then braked hard….He just wanted to say hi and then turned left and blasted across the grass.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4407/...f38871e1_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-22 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4333/...038bac81_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-23 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4427/...9e985b39_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-24 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

The guys had spilt up when they realized they had not seen us for a while and all tried to find us. We headed across the grass to meet the main track again. The wind was fierce for a short while and while we were fighting it. We saw a big bike in the distance barrel to us and on a meeting trajectory. Orvar caught up to us and then had to go back for the others. It is easy to get separated with so many tracks to choose from. We stopped in the lea of the wind to take a brake and take some photos while we waited for them.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4433/...499bb6eb_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-25 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4382/...7bc58006_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-26 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4423/...7d12f41d_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-27 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

We have 65 km to go still and it is after 6 pm. At 7 we stopped to decide what to do with the 40 km left and with the overcast sky the decision was to go to the town as there would be no star shots tonight for camping.

The road is gravel from here with a few wash outs with deep rocks and some water to cross. At the “cross road” the guys went straight since it was 20 km shorter than going right and over to the paved road, which had been the plan. This 20 km took almost an hour with the light fading. There were several small water crossings and one large river crossing. There were also a few wash outs to deal with. The last 10 km was good gravel to the town.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4420/...59c4e6fd_b.jpgUlummgon-37 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4332/...5af9e8a6_b.jpgUlummgon-40 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4398/...d98aae8c_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-28 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

On the way into the town Trevor’s bike was making some loud noise and he though it was the chain linkage from the new chain. We arrived just as the rain started and headed to the hotel recommended by the people we met at lunch. It is clean and cheap, but there is no hot water (it will be a few minutes…not). It is one of those places where the door handles are not properly attached and fall off when you open the doors, the window is not installed properly, and none of the plugs work. In fact we could not get back into our room with the key after breakfast. Luckily we had left the window open and Sara could go out Trevor’s window, along the ledge, and into our room.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4333/...a9cf1f15_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-31 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

It was raining all night and still pretty hard at 8 am. By the time we rolled out at 10 it was down to a drizzle. We made a stop to check out the statue of the famous Mongolian wrestler in front of the sports palace. The plan for the day was to try to get past Songrino to camp by a lake. We are unsure of how much of this is paved, but we were told by other riders that this distance was possible. We had been told the road was paved “for 50 km past the junction” what ever that means.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4412/...39a006bc_c.jpgScreen Shot 2017-09-04 at 22.19.25 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr


https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4335/...963156a8_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-29 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4356/...89d9c28d_b.jpgMongolia Khovd to Ulaangom_-30 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

We headed to the fuel station and met some Russian riders on small bikes.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4368/...9028991d_b.jpg
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4437/...f52400b3_b.jpg


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We only made it about 20 km when Trevor’s bike was really making noise. We stopped and found the rear bearing was destroyed. We are super thankful to the Perkins who we met in Sari-Tash on their Africa Twin as they warned him about the bearing issue. He had searched everywhere on line and there is nothing about bearing failure (20,000km). Also luckily Trevor still bought some bearings when we were in Bishkek otherwise it would be a truck and waiting 2-3 days for parts from Ulanbaatar. He took off the wheel and Wolfgang packed it, while Dan packed Trevor back to town. Orvar and Sara set up a shelter with the tarp and relaxed.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4332/...14f3a21e_b.jpgCamp at rocks-3 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4425/...4cfa4308_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-4 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4382/...ac3f535b_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-5 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4344/...907ef460_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-6 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

We had a few visitors the first was a local biker who stopped to check out the twin and say hi. The next was 2 guys in a car who said hello, came to shake our hands, proceeded to top up their oil, and then toss the bottle into the ditch! There is an unbelievable amount of trash on the road side here for the small amount of traffic. My bad drivers = garbage theory is blown here since they are very courteous drivers who throw their trash out the window.

It was a quick fix as the first shop they went to got right on it and they were back in about 2 hours.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4419/...612a0464_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-7 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4378/...5d7b875b_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-8 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4350/...fbce42e7_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-9 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4364/...cf354ea6_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-10 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4387/...3ab0c94a_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-11 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4416/...a6fbb010_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-12 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4366/...0d058df6_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-13 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4331/...dc9f32d3_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-14 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

While we were packing up a family arrived, stopped, unloaded and swarmed around us. They were super chatty (in Mongolian) and super curious. Just before they left they handed out big pieces of cheese to us all. We said thanks and tried it, but had to spit it out after they left. It was like very salty and very sour Parmesan.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4385/...a51122ab_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-16 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4381/...3f1e7e8f_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-18 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4406/...fa4c23ce_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-19 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

Not too far along the road we had these guys posing for us.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4357/...ff123019_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-20 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4333/...cb93a896_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-21 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4424/...68c7fb17_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-23 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4343/...8567bdaf_b.jpgUlaangom to Wild Camp-22 by Sara & Daniel Pedersen, on Flickr