Gobi Desert Highway
Our adventure began in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar, with its claim to fame as the coldest and most polluted capital in the world during winter. We were there during Summer…it was hot and clear.
From Ulaanbaatar we took a torturous 10-hour bus trip to the start camp in the south of the country, the last hour and a half of this trip being a bone jarring filling dislodging off road on corrugated dirt roads, horrendous….man was I happy when we finally arrived.
Start camp was an oasis. We had two nights and one full day at start camp where we attended mechanic workshops, a cultural etiquette briefing and a safety briefing. My favourite was the etiquette/safety briefing where you learnt about local customs, Gers, the family hierarchy etc., but the best was the talk about dogs.
On the one hand they armed you with the info you needed to interact with locals, etiquette for entering their Ger, and on the other hand they said if the dogs see you before the people do run for your life, they are guard dogs not pets, they will maul you!...nice talk, thanks for that.
The two big Un’s on this trip are the Un-Route and being Un-Supported.
The Un-Route – you’re at start camp and they’ve told you where the finish is about a week previous. You are on your own, no navigation tools of any kind provided, nothing, go whichever way you choose. We had bought a few maps in Ulaanbaatar, we thought we were prepared.
The one big savour was the cell phone coverage was amazing, far better than in NZ. What the Un-Route achieved was within 2 hours of the start we were on our own. Mongolia can only be described as vast – it’s really really big, about 6 times the size of NZ with only 3.5 million people.
The Monkey Run start to finish was approx. 900km as the crow flies, we did approx. 1,500km through a combination of getting lost, going round in circles, and heading in the wrong direction. Of our 1,500km about 200km was on road and the balance was off road. A combination of GPS position and physical map proved to work the best for navigation. Navigation isn’t easy as the country is very flat and there are very few landmarks, and even on-road signage is in-frequent.
Un-Supported - and they are not joking on the unsupported bit; you are on your own. We did hear of help being requested by a couple of participants, you were reminded that it is an unsupported trip. Whatever shit you get yourself into, you have to get yourself out of. That includes mechanical and medical. A full medical evac insurance cover was a pre-requisite. Of the 56 that started I think 50 finished.
If you had to give it away it was your responsibility to somehow get your bike back to Ulaanbaatar, not an easy thing to organize, especially with a language barrier.
The mighty steed, a SkyTeam Monkey Bike, 49cc of raw power (for a lawnmower – not so for a motorbike) gave this miniature powerhouse a range of 200 to 250km. A bike really made for kids or Lilliputians of which I am neither at 179cm & 110kg. The first job once you got the bike was to construct your luggage rack to carry all your gear, this added to the hilarity greatly – there were some weird and wonderful designs that I can’t imagine lasted very long – see below.
We had designed & built a rack back in NZ and brought it with us – a great cheat!. It was luck of the draw with the bike you got, our group of 4 was very lucky and had few problems compared to others. Our groups tally of brakage’s included a broken chain, speedo stopped working, spring in throttle broke, exhaust/muffler connection to engine broke – after that I had a Harley, luggage racks broke constantly, but others were far worse off than us.
We didn’t even get a puncture where others were telling stories of getting 4 in a day. These bikes took an absolute pounding for 11 days straight and got us to the finish in one piece – they are tough little bikes. Top speed was always achieved downhill, off road about 45km per hour, on road maybe 70km per hour which is pretty good when you consider the bikes were loaded up with gear.
Our fellow combatants were a great bunch of people from every part of the globe. A couple of stand outs for me was Mark from South Africa, and whoever said no question is a stupid question hasn’t met Mark – got banned from asking questions in the workshops, and the other was James an American Archeologist, turned up from a dig in Mongolia, doing Monkey Run was a last moment decision and he had never ridden a motorbike before – imagine Indianna Jones in full get up, minus the whip, but in Danny Devito’s body, and he owned it.
The people of Mongolia were very friendly and welcoming and often stopped to check if you were Ok when parked up. The dogs on the other hand were dodgy and fast – we had half a dozen escapes from dogs – google Tibetan Mastiff, they’re big. We were a total novelty/circus act to the locals riding our ridiculous bikes, and every time we stopped a local wanted to have a go. You had to be careful with the kids, as even a 5-year-old knew how to ride and would be off if you weren’t watching
Nature, you saw lots of camels, horses, goats, cattle, locusts, lizards, eagles, vultures, and the vultures were huge. My favourite were the gerbils – you’d be screaming a long at 40km/hr and the gerbils were everywhere running to dive into the safety of their holes – I would like to say no gerbils were hurt as part of this adventure, but some weren’t quick enough. Also bizarre was there were no fences anywhere, so livestock meandered where they wanted and had the right of way, whether that was in the city or in the middle of nowhere – and they knew it.
Crashes, there were many, luckily, I managed to stay out of the Stats. Our group of 4 probably had 15 crashes, there was one repeat offender who accounted for most of these, and who managed to pin himself under his bike the majority of times he crashed – very funny at the time. We did hear of a few medical DNF’s, so we were lucky to make it to the end with only cuts & bruises.
Accommodation, a mixture of camping, Gers, hostels, and hotels. In hindsight, don’t buy a cheap tent off the internet for a trip like this – mine went in the bin at finish camp. Our most memorable accommodation was a hostel we nicknamed The Shining, Maybe 30 to 40 rooms, we walked up the stairs and they turned on the lights for us, we were the only ones there, you expected to see twin girls standing at the end of the corridor every time you came out of your room. Anyway $15 a night and that included a surprisingly good breakfast…not bad.
Food, pretty good. A lot of mutton which I wasn’t a fan of, but other than that no complaints. We did try one local delicacy, Fermented Horse Milk which is very alcoholic. They did warn us about this at start camp saying don’t drink unless you want to spend a long time on the toilet. It is fermented inside two animal skins. Tasted a bit like an alcoholic yoghurt…the picture says it all. And yes, my stomach did not like it one little bit.
Equipment, our most important pieces of equipment…… ChatGPT and a 20L bucket. ChatGPT was our translator that saved our arse on many an occasion, and the bucket was a workbench to lift the bike onto for repairs, dry bag, a seat, and a card table. I recommend everyone travels with a bucket!
The actual journey, 11 days on the bike across desert, mountain, plain, river, mud bogs, forest, city, town and village, in the beautiful sunshine and in the rain. The roads a mixture of mud, dirt, gravel, sand and a bit of tarmac reprieve chucked it. Corrugated dirt roads and soft sand were our enemy.
The scenery was vast, the locals were great, it was awesome & exhausting in equal measures, dangerous at times but was worth it – I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. You’d often stop and have views in every direction to the horizon and you were the only human in the picture. I’ll let the pictures tell the story. Highly recommend with a group of mates, and the bonus for us was we were all still mates at the end.
The finish at Yeruu Lodge, about 40km south of the Russian border. When we arrived, the temperature was late 30’s. The staff told us it got down to -47 last winter, that’s one hell of a temperature range. Very cool place to finish at. A few too many beers & whiskey’s led to a very subdued trip back to Ulaanbaatar on the bus for many.
Next adventure Monkey Run Peru – from the Andes to the Amazon, check it out https://www.theadventurists.com/monkey-run-peru/
✍️Wayne Robinson 📸Wayne & friends
