Our third day in Mongolia was great. For me, at least. I had escaped the wrath of Chinggis Gold, but it conquered both Derick and JP. Derick had moved from the tent to the back seat of the car in the middle of the night, and didn't budge the next morning while JP and I broke the camp. JP was still a tad drunk, loading up the car with a giddy grin. His hangover would strike later.
We were packed and ready to go by 7 AM, and left the rest of the convoy behind as we took to the desert. It was another outstanding day of driving, less adventurous than the day before, but continually stunning. The panorama was painted in stripes. From the roadside to the rocky horizon, the topography was banded in a sequence of muted desert hues - striated layers of prairie grass, wildflowers, and rugged buff mountains, topped with a bold blue sky and cotton-ball clouds. For lunch we stopped to eat in a field of white ankle-high flowers, with a lone camel grazing in the distance.
Derick had mostly recovered by late afternoon, while JP had only gotten worse. We rotated seats around 4 PM - JP sprawled out in the back and Derick took the wheel and drove us to Altay. We found a nice spot to camp on the outskirts of town, and enjoyed a magnificent sunset, the sky ablaze in a fiery swirl of pink and orange.
We started our fourth day in Mongolia on 120 kilometers of paved road. Then it abruptly ended, dropping us back onto a sluggish and rugged dirt track. A half hour later we came across another rally team, driving slowly in our direction. It was the same guys we'd helped tow out of a mud pit a couple of days earlier, so we stopped to chat. Their reckless ways had once again gotten the best of them, except this time they'd cracked an axle. The car was barely drivable, and they were backtracking to Altay with hopes of getting it fixed. We wished them luck and carried on. Their misfortune was not uncommon on the Mongol Rally; rather, it was more unusual that we'd pretty much kept a clean sheet.
An hour later we got stuck in the sand. Nothing big -- we dug ourselves out. But not long after that we got our first flat of the entire Mongol Rally. On the second to last day of the trip! Almost a clean sheet.
Bayanhangor was the largest town we’d been to since reaching Mongolia, and it was after dark when we arrived. We met a nice young guy who spoke English, grabbed dinner together, and then drove to the outskirts of town to find a place to camp.
We spent the next morning getting the tire patched that we’d blown the day before, and scarfed down mutton pies and warm milk for breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall next to the tire shop. At the time, we weren't sure it would be our last day, but once we heard that the roads from Bayanhangor to Ulaanbaatar were mostly paved, we knew we were on the home stretch.
We left Bayanhangor around noon, continuing our voyage through a bucolic Mongolia, but as we approached the capital, traffic increased and the distance between towns shrunk. We had one last session of off-roading in an afternoon thunderstorm, and then it was nothing but paved roads until the end.
A couple of hours after dark, the horizon began to glow.
Six weeks earlier we'd left a medieval castle in the British countryside, and twenty countries and 10,000 miles later, we were finally bringing our journey to an end. We made it!
Our jubilation peaked once we hit the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, and quickly dwindled during the hour-long drive through a smoggy and traffic-jammed city. By the time we got to the Chinggis Khaan Hotel, the official finish line of the Mongol Rally, we were pooped. It was nearing midnight, and the mood was mellow to say the least. The hotel lobby was decorated with banners and signage to welcome and congratulate those who had finished, but despite a few weathered and weary ralliers, the place was empty. There had been completion parties at four, five, and six weeks out, and we'd missed the last one by a day. But none of that mattered. It had been a crazy six weeks, topped off by an amazing last few days in Mongolia, and we'd made it to Ulaanbaatar in one piece. Warm showers and comfy beds were all that we wanted, and that’s exactly what we got.
We ran into our friends the Desert Spoons and the B-Team the morning after we arrived. We'd met them for the first time in the mountains of Romania, and had shared some great moments together throughout the trip. It was awesome reuniting with them at the finish line, and we all celebrated together that night. Derick and JP left a couple of days later, and I hung out with our rally friends for the rest of the week until I caught my flight home. I had just wrapped up one of the most memorable adventures of my life, and only had a few days left before starting my last semester of grad school at NYU. But plans were already in the works for a late September trip to Bosnia...
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