Headed for the Big City

Well we had an interesting trip heading into Ulaanbaataar.  Kaylee needed her 6 month shots and we were going to watch our friends two teenagers while they went on a trip.  We were supposed to be gone about 12 days but it ended up being 14.  That is life in Mongolia.

Our trip started out the day before as Jeff was putting on a heater thingy on the radiator.  He put a little hole in it.  So, he went to have it fixed and a  Mongolian welded the hole.  Jeff said it was fine.  He didn't tell me before we left he gave the weld a 50 % chance of staying together or breaking.  Not good odds for Mongolia. We left the next morning and the first 2 hours were okay.  Jeff noticed the heat was high and took a look.  Needless to say the weld did not hold.  I was really worried that we wouldn't make it into town.  We trodded on as we put water in all along the way.  We got to the next big city Arawahare and bought a bunch of water. 

Jeff went to the bank and when he came out and started the car it would not start.  I fretted because I didn't really want to take a microbus into town.  Jeff took a look and noticed the cable to the battery was loose.  He was able to fix it easily enough.  I thank the Lord it wasn't any more serious than that.  From Arawahare to Lune it is a paved road and so we did really well.  It didn't leak much at all.  Right before we left Lune we filled up all the bottles and topped of the engine fluids.  70 km. from Lune to UB is really bad road and the hole got much larger and we lost water faster.  We stopped and asked a herder where some water was because we were almost out and not near civilization.  I prayed so hard that we would get there and that people would be praying that we would arrive safely in UB.  Jeff taped up the hole using electical tape and duct tape.  We put the last of our water in and about 5 km later we hit the paved road.  Another 5 km and we hit a hotel and they had plenty of water.  The Mongolian worker was so helpful and let us have as much water as we needed.  The engine had gotten really hot.  I was thinking of ways to get into town without the car because I didn't know if we would make it.  We were about 50 km from UB. 

Well now we are back in Bayankhongor, so as you can see we made it back.  You never know what to expect when you live and drive in Mongolia.