#mongoliq

[fuckyeahmongolgirls]

[latresgrandeboucle]

Mongolia Inside Out

I'm waiting for Spag to come back up the stairs to our hotel room, before I go down with my bags. We've given away too much stuff on this trip, we can't afford to leave our room unattended. The lanky Norman comes down the corridor laughing and says we have a mate downstairs. I'm guessing it means there's a frog down there, and I go down and find out I was right. It's one of those french white rasta, and I wander what old Marcus would have made of this, I'm not too sure what it means, I'm not sure there is a meaning to it, but it doesn't matter, El Afghani's doing the talking, answering the usual questions, and yes the trip has been great, and yes we were safe in South America, and yes the Andes do have steep hills. Spag comes down from the room with his bike, and straps his bags, rubs the cream all over his backside, and we're off, waving the white rasta goodbye.

We've decided to move North towards the Baikal Lake, as the roads in the West of Mongolia are unpaved, sandy, full of stones, and in a few days, when the rain season kicks off, we'll be cycling in mud. We've tried all that before in Bolivia, or in Brazil, and hauling a 50kg bicycle along dusty paths is almost impossible. So here we are on our way North towards Russia, where hopefully we'll be able to ride on something hard. 

The wind is blowing right in our faces, and I push down hard on my dirty purple pedals, putting in the labour, you can't expect cycling around the world to be easy ride, and today's going to be one of those short but hard stages, and tomorrow will be easier, it'll be alright. The steep hill is reaching up to the sky, going on forever, and I decide it's time to pause, turn my back to the wind, pull my cycling shorts down and do the job while admiring the view. Mongolia feels like magic, and land of mysteries, where people are living the same as they were hundreds or even thousands of years ago, the invention of the motorbike being almost the only change, but the horse is still the favorite means of transport. I can see a man down in the valley kicking his horse in the sides, making it gallop faster, and that's what we should be doing too. Taking bikes - or anything with wheels - to Mongolia is pretty foolish, but you only realise that once you're there. A few white yurts are scattered around the landscape, warm, small and cosy, the exact opposite of the outside world. That's what Mongolia's all about for me, it's a country with two faces: the inside and the outside. And right now it might feel a little painful, but I'm facing the beautiful outside.

A crowd of coloured rooftops appear ahead of us in the valley. Mongolian houses are practically always made the same way, tree trunks for walls, and a metal roof, always painted in a bright colour: orange, red, blue, or green. There're always a few yurt scattered around, even in the towns. It's a great sight as we come down to Erdenet after a third mountain pass, pedaling on the way down, the wind holding us back never mind how steep the slope is. We finally reach the town and it's about time as Spag's just ran out of water, the team's feeling battered, hungry, tired, and ready to experience the inside face of Mongolia.

Seb

--

Photos Spag

Partenaires / Facebook / latresgrandeboucle.com