Route in brief: Uliastai > Muhartin Spring > Erdenekhairkhan > Zavkhan Mandall > Urgamal > Khyargas Nuur Lake > Khyargas > Maltchin (Khan Khukhii mountain range) > Uvs Nuur > Ulaangom
Uliastai – paperwork and marketlife
From the distant valley we could see how spread out Uliastai is. It seemed like it is divided in 3 parts. We arrived there and searched for a hotel / guesthouse with the mission to arrange 3 thing : 1 explore the city, 2 extend our visa, 3 fix all our already broken gear 😉
The city has great supermarkets !with! Peanut butter (3 glasses for us ;)) and an amazing vegetable market with five funny and cheerful ladies. We visit the museum, displaying many archeological items as well as historical artefacts and a monestary on the viewpoint. Two mornings were spent with visa arrangements.
Zavkhan Aimag Part II – Let’s go to the beach
Off we go again towards the west – heading out to explore the Aimag a little bit more. Ready for the sand and dessert feeling. We follow the route which also inspired our first days of the tour by bikepackground.com. The first pass leads us to unexpected green lush fields. After the next pass and some downhill kilometers we get a peak of the landscape we were expecting. Mongol Els is awaiting us and in the middle a beautiful lake appears.
A still quite well rideable hard sandy piste leads us over a steep pass and opens up a unbelievable beautiful landscape. The valley appears to be divided, the river marking it middle ground. Left (the southern side) green and juicy hills appear and right (northern) side sandfields and a dune out of which sharp black rocks opened up. Further down in the valley the river is still frozen. The obscure landscape continues as we ride up, at first, and then push up the very steep pass. Dark brown rock formation rose up in front of us as we struggle up the ridge. We set up our tent as rain started to drizzle down and for the first time it is dinner time in the tent. After the rain the sky rewarded us with a spectacular sunset.
Next morning the pass felt only half as steep anymore and we ride through a huge natural rock arch. The majestic gate to the dessert and so we descend via a steep straight piste towards the sand. Our first sand crossing and now it’s time to push the bikes. As we enter the sandfield a herd of horses come out of nowhere towards us. Not sure who was more confused, them or us. After the 3km of pushing/dragging our heavy bikes through deep sand we empty our shoes, we take a forced break to fix Julias broken bike rack, which couldn’t handle the rugged pistes of the past days and we head towards the next highlights. A passage through steep rock walls leads to the next highlight and to a bit of a more touristic area as it seems.
It is still early in the season and we have the place for ourselves and the café in the middle of nowhere is still closed.
We enter dunes by foot and hike to our next water source. Two kilometres following faded car tracks a guesthouse appears in the middle of sand walls (still closed) after another kilometer an oasis appears, a river, trees, flowers, in the middle of the golden sand. If you continue a few more kilometres you will reach the spring of the river muhartin. At the foot of an almost vertical sand dune a dark brown line marks the source of water covering the entire length of this dune. Absolutely magnificent and were totally captured by the gigantic walls of gold, the fresh water squeezing out of the entire length of wall, spreading over this wide area turning into a shallow stream at first and later on into a full-grown river. Even more mesmerising is the jade landscape and vegetation it created in its arid surroundings. We even find wild rhubarb – perfect for today’s dessert. Hiking back with a load of water and refreshed mind and feet.
One more pass, a small next village (Erdenekhairkhan – now try to pronounce that ;)) and the 200 kilometer golden shimmering Bor Khar Els (sand dune) awaits us. We will ride along side of this dune for a bit on sometimes compact sand, a sand-gravel mix but also some stretches of deeper sand.
Sand is a tricky thing
A golden deceive
A rodeo ride
Think you found flow?
Washboard kicks in
The bike rears up
Longing for grip
Stuck in deep sand
Steer, paddle, steer
Manically turning
Snakewise crawling
Forcefully robbing
Just to drop
Like a hot potato
In the soft bedded gold
We follow the golden path with the gorgeous sand dune to our right side. The stretch is physically and mentally quite tough. We only saw a handful of vehicles on these tracks driving in the evening and night. One truck got stuck in the deep sandy piste.
Two small villages are on the stretch to refuel: Zavkhan Mandall a sleepy town with a photography “exhibition” displayed on the main road. Urgamal a slightly bigger town, where we wait out a sandstorm in the afternoon and plan our route. As our clocks appear to have developed a life of their own we sometimes found ourselves clueless what the correct time is. The eastern aimags are located in a different timezone but somehow us, as well as our phones and the gps, are pretty confused where this timezone starts ;). Afterall what matter is sunrise, sunset (and shop opening hours). So it may have happened that in Zavkhan Mandall we „austrian-/germanly“ stood one hour too early on the doorstep of the little shop 😉
Here we depart from the route that we have followed and head north towards Khyargas Nuur Lake and Khan Khukhii mountains. For this course we have no clue how the road will be – some people in the village just said okay, few km gravel few km sand.
Uvs Aimag – Refreshing Lakes – refreshing Trails
What we do know and dread, is that it will be a long stretch of at least 90km at worse even 180km without any source of water (and also no shops). Yep we will head towards a lake but the crux is that the lake is a saltwater lake, so probably fine for cooking (when mixing our drinking water) but for water intake we didn’t really dare to rely on it. Time to turn our bikes into camels. The path is better than the sandy turns of the last days – which is a huge relief. A few hiking meters are needed but that’s okay. We meet a very nice family at a ger offering something to drink and find a herd of camels in the arid landscape. Camels are so far the most chilled about cyclists – just standing there, minding there own business and looking at you with indifference or disbelieve.
We arrive at the east lakeside by the evening. With strong headwind we ride to a „beach“ at the more Northern lakeside to have breakfast the next day and cross one of the major (and paved) roads of the country. To our surprise we find a ger (the substitute for the closed or maybe shut down restaurant) that sells drinks and a few snacks. Great news for us, as according to all our maps any „shop“ was nowhere closer than 90km. The lady warns us – „no water – very scary“ when we tell them our plan. With that extra water, two coffees at the „beach“ are safe and we spent our time there till after midday. Looking towards the east we see the sanddunes that we came from, looking towards the west end of the lake, we see the snow capped mountains which we are aiming for. We stay at the north east tip of the lake and let its magnitude, the shimmering shades of blue sink in, reflecting on the past days. The Khyargas Nuur is about 1400m2 about 4 times as big as lago di garda. While there are some tourist camps around, the shore appears to us glittering desolated.
We turn our backs to the lake and head north towards the Khan Khukhii Range which is a continuation of the northwestern Khangai Mountains. It’s natural green border between the desserts and we find ourselves surrounded by arid hills at first and then rock walls open up around us in various colours. After several altitude meters on empty rolling mountain paths we arrive at a pass an get a peak of the Boorog Deliin Els (sanddune). Its safe to say that we feel more “at ease” with steep passes, climbing altitude meters in mountainous terrain than in arid semi-dessert regions. We find a small stream which is also a relief.
Astonishing how we peak from the lush jade vegetation towards a glowing sandfield. In the horizon we can see snow-capped mountains that reach over 4000 and tickling our curiosity. The paths flow easily, uphills feel almost effortless and we arrive, via a rivercrossing (we’ve genuinely missed those in the past days) in the vibrant town Khyargas.
A steep pass and an accidental detour (“our path ended and we follow a motorcycle trail downhill” kind of story) led to perfectly shaped, fun flow trail towards the town Maltchin, from where we are leaving the mountain range and ride towards the uvs nuur (lake). The lake and its basin are an UNESCO world heritage and play an important role for migrating birds. With its 3350km2 it’s much bigger than the other lakes we have been to before. We leave our bikes behind some bushes and hike towards its shore. A peaceful place.
After a refresher we drive to Ulaangom (translated the Red Valley) the capital of the Uvs Aimag.
Woanders 