Miles driven: 487 miles
Time in Car:10 hours
Borders crossed: 0
Since we were still in the mountainous region of western Mongolia, our morning was a cold one. Still the sunrise over the clear skies made for incredible views in the morning. After a quick dip and shower in the freezing Tolbo Nuur lake, we were on our way.
Two-humped camels
The driving for the greater part of the day was actually quite nice and easy. Nearly 430 miles of paved highway allowed us to sail across the steppe. Gradually, we descended in elevation and the Altai rocky peaks rounded into smaller mountains further in the distance; the steppe stretched on in all directions. While the drive was scenic, there weren’t too many highlights. More packs of camels and yaks and we stopped to snap some photos. We had a lunch of instant ramen on the side of the road. We finished our third audiobook, Michael Crichton’s The Lost World. Past 6 pm, we reached a stretch of unpaved road. Our route through southern and central Mongolia had been paved to this point. Apparently, the road had been put in by the government in the prior years. Previous ralliers had it much worse. Still, there were going to be treacherous sections of road, or lack thereof.
We were handling the road particularly well, with the normal bottoming out we had been accustomed to. However, about an hour into our journey, we forcefully grounded into a rut and immediately we knew our sump guard was busted again. We all hopped out of the car and just as we had expected the sump metal guard had been sheared off, again. However, there was one part of rear right flange that had been welded on in Murghab that was still hanging on. Either we had to remove the sump guard completely (which we wanted to do) or we had to somehow secure the sump to the bottom of the car still allowing us enough ground clearance to continue onwards. We tried he former first. We tried banging on it with hammer - no good. We then hitched our tow rope to it and played tug-of-war with the stubborn sump attachment - no good either. It was getting dark so we decided the best thing we could do was ratchet strap the sump guard to our car, anchoring our ratchets on our roof box. While a hack job, it worked. The driver and front passenger had to enter the car from the backseat since the ratchet straps held tight over the front doors. Still, it allowed us to continue on. Our plan was to drive about 20 miles to the small town in hope there was a mechanic or at least someone who owned an angle grinder, welder, or hack saw so we could just cut the sump off.
Trying to remove our sump guard
We camped right off the road where our sump ripped off and ate more instant noodles for dinner. Thankfully, darkness did not bring a biting cold like it had previous nights and we went to sleep as sporadic Mongol truck drivers lit up our tent with their headlights as they passed by. Hopefully tomorrow, we can get our sump situated quickly and continue onwards. -FWY
We camped in the middle of nowhere
Fixed it…