The journey continues; the second half of our month-long Mongolian trip awaited us. Mongolia’s stunning Gorky Park had provided us with thrills, spills and a heap of excellent trad routes… but it seemed time to move on, to head out west, to finally see the remote, endless steppe of the country’s vast interior. We headed back to Ulaan Baatar for a re-supply trip (and a second visit to the infamous Carlsberg Club), finally finding our hotel room knee-deep in supplies gained from all over town. It’s tough to find decent food in Ulaan Baatar! Especially fresh veg and fruit. So tins and cans it was, then: in huge quantities. Plus Mongolia’s ubiquitous noodles, of course. The next day dawned bright and clear, and we headed west, falling off the tarmac a mere 50 miles or so out of the capital. From here it was all dirt, dust and gravel; have you seen Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on the Long Way Round? Mongolia’s just like that; when it rains, the dirt turns slick, and the truck starts to spin…The joys of wild, crazy road trips, and with our continuing quest for the fabled gritstone still alight, of course – although I think we’d already resigned ourselves to the fact that, with all that luscious, colourful granite lying about, did we really need to find the gritstone?

And so it went on. Days passed, 7 folk squeezed into a truck that, quite frankly, had already seen better days. But the journey was incredible. Mongolia is incredible. Can I just say that word once more? The captions and images that follow give evidence of life out west. A place of eagles, camels, lakes, horsemen, gers – and shocking, unremitting silence. Mongolia is an absolute wonder; simply, there’s no place on earth quite like it.

 

 

1. The crazy emptiness of Mongolia. It was on this section of the road, in the western province of Arkhangay, that we experienced our first proper rain. The effect was horrendous, with dirt tracks now seemingly like ice; after spinning half a dozen times and almost rolling the van twice (“jump to the left!”, we gave our orders to our mischievous driver. “Second gear only, PLEASE!”

 

 

2. Life on the road; the author and Tim. This was to be our view for much of the trip – that elusive Mongolian gritstone took a hell of a lot of finding! Our loyal but prematurely worn-out Russian van was just two years old, and had already been welded up all around the windscreen and door pillars…

 

 

3. Life in the sticks. Note the rouge cheeks. Life is harsh here; 7-8 month winters are standard, with average daily temperatures in mid-winter dropping to minus 40. The diet of a nomad includes mutton (officially classified as ‘the flesh of mature sheep’), noodles, horse’s blood and occasionally fish. Fruit and vegetables are rare, and hard to find even in large towns.

 

 

4. The colourful children of Tavanbulag, Arkhangay Province – with their ger in the background. The canvas seen here in the background forms the outer shell of the wooden-framed circular tent, with internal layers of felt providing the much-needed insulation.

 

 

5. The Mongolian steppe takes absolutely no prisoners. Along this one desolate track, we saw a dead horse about once a mile – for about 30 miles.

 

6. We stayed two nights at the river near Chuluu Rock, and even tempted the locals with our slackline! This guy was a natural, we should have taken him along to the granite for a little new-routing…

 

7. Gers, a tepee and Chuluu Rock. This spattering of nutty architecture, unfortunately, didn’t provide any rock solid enough to climb on – Chuluu Rock itself is a 20m-high lump of rather loose volcanic tuff.

 

 

8. The average Mongolian family has a small dresser, sometimes accompanied by one or two ancient portraits. They don’t own cameras, and they don’t understand the concept of a Polaroid picture. Grant’s Polaroid camera thus proved to be something of a miracle to them. Here a young girl is watching her own image appear, as if by magic, on the print – her reaction brought tears to our eyes.

 

9. Crazy days. Our new-found companions near our Chuluu Rock camp became ever-more friendly. It does seem that staying ‘in place’ long enough brings them all out for a gander. Our camping gear and tents confounded them, our iodine-filled water containers confused them, and our tricams? Don’t ask. The lazy-looking yak in the background gave us slow, bemused rides across the river.

 

 

10. But it’s not all about yaks, oxen and camels. Here Neil is seen taking out a horse on loan for the day (“she’ll need topping up about half-way”) – yep, he’s another one of those annoying naturals. Seb was thrown to the floor after a two-minute jaunt, and I got stared down and duly discarded during the embarkation process.

 

11. Our further leap west-wards brought us to a volcanic crater, and this: the huge, volcanic lake of Khorgo-Terkhiyn Tsagaan Nuur National Park. Visited by Ewan and Charley during their mammoth Long Way Round, the 2,500m-high region is utterly breathtaking. Here we dined on fish, caught for us by the locals.

 

12.  …And so it was that we finally encountered rock ‘out west’ of Ulaan Baatar. The granite-strewn hillside above the town of Tsetseleg provided probably our most solid granite of the whole trip, with bouldering and routes to be dispatched in every direction. This is Seb, warming up on the boulders.

 

13. More bouldering; this time Neil, with his first ascent of possibly Mongolia’s hardest boulder problem to date. Genghis Power, Font 7c.

 

14. Perfect backdrop territory, but not a hospital in sight – worth remembering when you’re on-sighting in the wilds of Mongolia. The guide suggests that serious injury is ‘best followed by a rapid flight to Bejjing’, on account of the hazards of booking yourself into a Mongolian hospital. Seen here is Neil, on Dimsim; E4 5c.

 

15. Our hardest trad offering in the country was Tim’s Westworld, at E6 6b. Protected by two pegs, it was duly dispatched (just) by every member of the team. A fitting finale to our ‘way out’ trip out west! Author - Mike Robertson