Crazy winds and bad terrain

Day 1

Position: N46° 20.143' E096° 19.682'

Distance traveled: 2.3 km

We woke up to a beautiful day, calm and clear skies. We said some parting words to our driver, who turned around and headed back home. The van drove away into the distance, the town of Altay was behind us, we had over 1000 km to travel in front of us.

We took advantage of the nice weather and finished assembling our buggies. Curtis and Eric decided to test out the Mongolian way of making fires, with shit. After collecting dried sheep and goat shit, and some dry grass for kindling, they placed it into a pit and lit it. Amazingly it burned putting off some very strong smelling aromas. But we managed to cook up a lunch of veggies in tin foil over our fire.

The winds started increasing, but erratic, blowing strong one minute, then dyeing off the next. Eager to get some mileage, we launched our kites. But after only a couple minutes the bad terrain and gusty winds ceased to cooperate. So we tied a rope to our buggies and started hauling them over the salt marshes. In some area's it took all three of us to push and pull our heavy buggies through. Just as the sun started to set, and the winds died down, we came across better terrain. We had only gained a couple km, and exhausted we ate some spicy soup and crawled into our sleeping bags.

Sarah