The World by Road Journal - Page 38 of 59

Roads? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Roads

By Steve Bouey in

September 30, 2007 – 10:30 pm

It has been a few days since our last blog posting, but out here in the wild, wild west, I mean east, when you drive 20 minutes outside of Ulaanbaatar, you are pretty much stepping back into the past and things like internet connections do not exist nor are they necessary. We recently got back from a five day adventure 300 kilometers west of UB and it was quite an experience… so much so that it merits its own blog, so I will stick to the basics and cover the adventure of simply getting to our destination in this post.

Before we got to Mongolia, we had heard about the road conditions in the country, or quite literally, the lack of roads entirely. It is hard to really imagine a country without roads, but once you arrive, the reality sets in. We wrote previously about our experiences of crossing the Gobi Desert, but believe it or not, the further west you head the more difficult the terrain becomes. What was once open grassland, sand and relatively smooth dirt tracks soon give way to mountains and rocky, rugged surfaces that like to take nice little chunks out of your 10 ply off-road tires… tyres for our international friends. The Mickey Thompson tires on the Thundra are still holding up extremely well but I don’t think Mickey himself could imagine the conditions you encounter here in Mongolia.

The Russian UAZ-469 is the vehicle of choice for navigating the "roads" here in Mongolia but I’ll take the Thundra any day

Paved surfaces exist in UB and some of the other major cities and towns, but considering over half of the roughly 2 million people that call Mongolia home live in UB, the vast majority of paved roads occupy a very, very small area of Mongolian real estate. Outside of the population centers, the road basically consists of a series of jeep tracks and trails that wind their way in a chaotic fashion throughout the countryside. There is evidence of road construction in the form of the "millennium road" that will span the length of Mongolia from east to west, but from what I saw, we might be well into the next millennium before that project is even close to being completed. For the time being, it is pretty much every vehicle for themselves.

Pick a path… any path

At first glance, the swath of tracks that crisscross the barren landscape seem like they would be pretty easy to follow, but eventually, you end up jumping on one that for whatever reason comes to an abrupt end or veers off in a direction completely opposite from the one you need to be going. Even with the aid of local experts in the Thundra with me, I still managed to get off-track a few times over the course of the last few days. When you do manage to get off the right trail, you are forced to drive cross-country until you are reunited with a more heavily worn track that will eventually lead to a more heavily worn track and so on and so forth. If it were not for the built-in compasses in the Toyotas and a pair of good binoculars, we could potentially be in a bit of trouble.

When in doubt, follow a Mongolian biker gang

A few people we have met here in Mongolia have strongly suggested the purchase of a GPS system, but we have been reluctant to buy one because a) Steve and I are both ex-Boy Scouts and like to think we know a thing or two about orienteering b) we don’t want come across as being total pansies in the company of our burly Mongolian friends and c) we are totally broke so can’t really afford one anyway. In fact, due in part to the fact that there are no developed roads or road signage of any sort here in Mongolia, Lonely Planet goes as far as listing all of the popular sites and towns by their GPS coordinates. I guess that is convenient for some, but none of the Mongolians we have met use or posses GPS units and we have managed to find our way through over 1,000 kilometers of some of the most remote countryside in the world… kudos to the Scouts (with some added local assistance of course). When all else fails, there is also the local version of GPS – the Ger Positioning System. No matter where you are in Mongolia, the door of a Ger is always pointing due south.

Don’t get me wrong, it is actually pretty easy for a westerner to find their way from place to place if they have a descent head screwed on their body. If on the odd chance you do come across a dead end, you simply drive across a field, find a highpoint to check your bearings or ask a herder which way the door on his Ger is facing and you are back on track… or at least one of them. In the end, this is all part of the adventure of driving around the world.

You know you are on the right track when you come across a Mongolian roadhouse… made up of Gers of course

By Steve Bouey | Posted in Mongolia, Road Conditions, The Toyotas | Comments (0)

New News Page

By Steven Shoppman in

September 27, 2007 – 7:10 am

We have recently created a page where you can check out all of our previous appearances in the media. Click the link below to check it out.

Media Appearances Page

By Steven Shoppman | Posted in Expedition Updates | Comments (0)

A long time ago in a State far far away…

By Steven Shoppman in

September 26, 2007 – 6:54 am

We did an interview on the radio in Denver, CO. Have a listen.

By Steven Shoppman | Posted in World News | Comments (0)

Laos National Radio Interview

By Steven Shoppman in

September 25, 2007 – 6:51 am

It has taken a little while, but here is the interview that we did on Laos National Radio. In the more remote parts of the province they are not able to get the radio signal, so they take tapes that are played everywhere on a loud speaker. So imagine this belting our from the PAs all over the countryside in Southern Laos.

By Steven Shoppman | Posted in Laos, World News | Comments (0)

Updated Timeline and Routemap

By Steven Shoppman in

September 24, 2007 – 4:39 am

Things are ever changing here at TWBR and as part of those changes, we have made some recent modifications to the route. China put us behind, but we have been making good time catching back up. Soon we will be into the Stans and then Europe. One of the biggest changes to date is the new plan to head all the way up to North Cape in Norway. This is the northern most point that roads will take you in Europe.

We have also re-added Alaska to the route at the end of the journey. Why? This will allow us to circumnavigate the globe not only from East to West, but now North to South as well. As part of this we will get to see the Northern Lights twice, and make a little side trip to a hotel made completely from ice in Sweden.

If you have been thinking about joining us, the timeline will also be a great way for you to plan ahead for the segment you are interested in. We will regularly update this page as changes occur in our schedule.

So check out the new route and timeline with the links below.

Timeline

Route

By Steven Shoppman | Posted in Expedition Updates | Comments (1)

China – The Final Tally

By Steve Bouey in

September 23, 2007 – 3:26 am

Aside from organizing and packing about 100 pounds of carvings, textiles, Vietnamese snake wine and other various souvenirs we have acquired along our journey to ship back home, we have had a little down time and this has enabled me to calculate just how much money we spent getting our trucks into and driving them through China.

The final cost of obtaining permission to get into China and "self-drive" our own vehicles through "Big Red One," came to about $5,600. This included obtaining the necessary national and provincial authorizations, the Chinese number plates for the Toyotas, Chinese drivers licenses for Steve and myself, the required guide to accompany us while in China and a 30 second vehicle safety inspection. (The safety inspection was bogus because before we even arrived, the Chinese government required us to have one done at an authorized testing center which we did in Bangkok for about $30 per vehicle, so I guess we could have just burned that 1,600 Bhat… it would have been more fun)

In addition to the paperwork cost, we could not drive anywhere in China without paying road tolls. By the time it was all said and done, we spent another $350 per vehicle for tolls on expressways where we could only drive 45 kilometers per hour because of the congestion and on provincial highways that although not as congested, prevented us from driving much faster because of the surface conditions. Parking the trucks in the bigger cities was not as big of a deal as we anticipated, but it still cost about another $50 in parking fees. Petrol was actually comparatively cheap in China, costing us only about 18.2 Yuan per gallon ($2.43) but since we ended up driving just under 3,500 miles (5,600 km) to cross China, it cost us about $1,160 to quench the collective thirst of the Thundra and Little Pepe.

Finally if you take into account the wear and tear on the vehicles (flat tires and the noticeable dent on the side of the Thundra from and eager yet unskilled motorcycle driver) you can probably add another $1,000 to the total. In the end, driving our own two vehicles through China cost us a buck or two. We only were authorized to spend three weeks in China, but the $8,570 we forked out to do so cost us more than we have spent on the entire expedition excluding vehicle shipping costs. I guess I could also calculate the cost to our own personal health as a result of air quality in China and the stress involved in getting in, as well as the opportunity cost of sitting around and waiting for countless hours for more paperwork to get processed after we arrived, but I don’t even know where to begin with that.

Believe it or not, in conversations with other people who have driven their own vehicles through China or were planning to do so, the cost to TWBR was actually a bargain. An Australian couple spent over $15,000 on their paperwork alone, and our original quote from the Chinese International Travel Service (CITS) was $160,000 so I guess we could have spent a lot more. So if you are ever planning on a road trip through China in your own car, you had better have some Benjamins in your bank account.

Authentic Chinese driver’s license – $1,750

Chinese military number plates for your trucks – $2,400

Driving your own car through China – Probably not worth it

By Steve Bouey | Posted in China | Comments (2)

The thing about roads

By Steven Shoppman in

September 22, 2007 – 3:11 am

Our last days in China and our first days in Mongolia are the textbook definition for contrast. Although neighbors, these two countries share little in common other than a border. The last week for us has been highly eventful to say the least.

Driving in the desert with a young guy from China lends time for many questions. The fork in the road heading North to Mongolia is the start of the heavily industrialized Northeast of China. As we approached this fork in the road, the air started to get more and more dense with smoke. Factories lined the highway spewing smoke so thick that it is surprising the air is even breathable. Jason informed me that this most polluted area of China. After our time in Xian it is hard to believe that it could get any worse. This area of China is so polluted that when satellites fly over the images are simply white smoke.

The border of the Inner Mongolia province in China is where the South of the Gobi desert begins. Here many changes are present. It is the only province that China allowed to keep their roots when Mao took over in the 50s. Road signs, homes and villages are in great contrast to the rest of China. Instead of houses many of the communities have yurts. The factories get thinner and thinner and the wind picks up. Relief on the horizon changes from hills and mountains to plains and finally just endless miles of sand and barren desert. Characters in the old style Mongolian alphabet look like a new form of Arabic turned on its side. We like to call it fire writing.

Eventually, all of this new information led me to some questions with our guide Jason. I asked, "Why is Inner Mongolia part of China and not a part of Mongolia?"

"Inner Mongolia was actually liberated and this year is the 60th anniversary."

In my head I am thinking, liberated from whom? So many times since the start of this journey the history lessons make me feel ever so stupid.

Jason carried on, "When The Peoples Democratic Republic of China was formed in the 40s by Mao, they were the last nation that China liberated."

I thought in my head about good old Chairman Mao. I though more about Tibet. Liberated is a very interesting term, in my past I have always associated it with something being held captive against their will. IThe Inner Mongolians were liberated from their inferior government, just like the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans were "liberated" from their lack of communism. Others may see things differently, but the Dalai Lama is a pretty easy choice over Mao and communism any day of the week. It is unfortunate that great guys like our guide Jason have spent their whole life being lied to by their government. He knows no better, according to the history books and anything that you can access in China, all of the nations China invaded were liberated. A simple search on the Internet will give the rest of the world the facts about what happened in these places, but any site with something adverse to say about the situation in Tibet or Inner Mongolia is blocked in China. In fact, all images in an image search for Inner Mongolia was blocked when searching while in Beijing, like for instance this satellite photo of the pollution over NE China (all of the gray is smoke from the factories, click the photo to check out the hi-def version).

Luckily enough, our turn was to the left taking us North to Mongolia. The writing on the signs changes, the weather changes, but most importantly the smoke begins to fade. It is amazing how much better you feel when the air quality is not threatening your health on a daily basis. We had our first glimpse of blue skies in over three weeks. It certainly put a smile across both of our faces. Wide open nothingness was just what the doctor ordered. Well built highways with hardly another car in sight was certainly a great way to ease our way into the next few hours of the usual Chinese border madness.

As we approached the border a rainbow bridge spanned the road leading to the last of our time in China. I asked Jason if it was the Mongolians or the Chinese that like rainbows; he informed me that it was in fact the Mongolians. How could things get better? We were leaving the cloud of pollution under a rainbow entering a country full of people that like rainbows. After jumping through all of the Chinese hoops we finally said goodbye to Jason and made our way through the last two Chinese checkpoints (there were three total to leave).

Moments later we arrived at the Mongolian border. This is not a place that I would recommend anyone visit unless they have a great deal of patience. It did not take us long to get through, but finding out how to get through is the hard part. After finishing at immigration and making our way through the hoards of drunken Mongols, the radio conversations between the two of us wen something like this:

"Okay so what now?"

"Let’s go down that line."

"I think that old bus is broken down at the end of it."

"Do we need paperwork to get through."

"I don’t know."

"Let’s just go for it."

"But how the road is totally blocked."

"I think we can go the wrong way on the other side of the road and get around this."

This went on for another 5 minutes or so, until we found a place to park the trucks and milled around asking questions. We did notice that when people left the final checkpoint at the border they were giving the guard a piece of paper. It seemed in our best interests to obtain one of these slips before trying to get through.

After a couple laps around the inspection yard I managed to track down a customs officer dealing with some more drunk Mongolians. This led the two of us into the customs building that was equally chaotic. At every turn a though pops up in this building…what is that smell. Well my friends, that is the smell of alcohol on everyone’s breath, drivers included. $4 later we had our handwritten note from customs saying that we could go.

_DSC0437 At this point the sun was going down and we were on our way into the heart of the Gobi desert with nothing more than some binoculars and a compass. The common question people ask before you leave on "roads" in Mongolia is, "Do you have a GPS?" Our immediate answer is, "Heck no, that takes all the fun out of it." Clearly we did not know what we were getting ourselves into.

We drove for about 30 min on what we thought was the highway, only to decide that it did not seem right so then drove 15 mins through the open desert in hopes of finding a better road. Go North, Go West. Eventually you have to in Ulaanbaatar, just follow the railroad tracks, or at least that is what we kept telling ourselves. By now it was getting dark so we pulled off the track and watched the sun set.

We passed out that night and woke up to find ourselves covered in sand with the wind blowing. Our rig that we set with the tarp to block wind did a good job, but it was just no match for the Gobi winds. After brushing off all the sand and packing up, we hit the "road" again.

Never in my life did I expect to be a the top of a hill in the desert using binoculars to find my way. Never did I expect to use piles of alcohol bottles as _DSC0452 markers to find my way. Never did I expect to think of camels at a gas station as the usual. This is Mongolia and this is the Gobi, and it has never been so apparent since we left just how far away from home we have managed to get.

That is the thing about roads, if you take the right one you will end up in a country full of people that like rainbows and ride camels; if you take the wrong one you might just end up in a place were satellite photos are just fuzzy tones of gray. I will take the rainbow lovers any day of the week, those commies down south can take their paperwork and smog and put it where the sun don’t shine and rainbows don’t exist.

_DSC0458

A little navigation.

_DSC0486

Mongolian National Highway

_DSC0514

This eagle was trying to hide.

_DSC0534

Gas, Camels, We’ve got it all.

_DSC0528

After 3 days navigating the Gobi Marco Polo style, it was nice to get back to the pavement.

By Steven Shoppman | Posted in China, Mongolia | Comments (1)

Things Are Starting to Get Interesting

By Steve Bouey in

September 20, 2007 – 5:32 am

When we left on The World by Road seven months ago, we knew that were were going to see some eye opening things, meet some interesting people and experience a lot of things that for us at the time would seem pretty out of the ordinary. For the most part, the trip has not disappointed in this regard and we have had a lot of unusual experiences. However, our collective experiences and encounters in Australia, SE Asia and China would not necessarily fall into the category of being totally random.

In order to experience some truly random things, you need only to come to Mongolia, because we are tallying them up on a daily basis here. I am even going to take some of these experiences a step beyond just simply being random, and categorize them as being straight up weird…I mean Twilight Zone type weird, and it did not take long to start to have weird things happen to us in Mongolia.

You are now about to enter the Twilight Zone

After crossing the Mongolian border, we immediately felt like we were tossed into the wild west. The border crossing is on the edge of the vast emptiness of the Gobi Desert and as soon as we arrived, we were greeted to an oncoming sand/dust storm. The wind and flying debris added to our confusion as we tried to negotiate our way through countless Russian-made jeeps and trucks overloaded with supplies and goods obtained across the border in China.

Once we had paid our 4,000 Togrogs (a little less than $4) to get our cars cleared through customs, we headed out into the desert. Heading out into a strange and potentially dangerous environment such as a vast desert is probably not the best idea especially since it was starting to get dark. Within a matter of minutes, the sealed road of the border town of Zamyn Uud, disappeared into a maze of jeep tracks that seemed to go off into the Gobi in all directions. Convinced that this could not be the highway to Ulaanbaatar, we turned around and tried to get our bearings. With the help of a Mongolian truck driver and his creative way of telling us just to head northeast, we determined that the chaotic and crisscrossing tracks did in-fact represent the road to Ulaanbaatar. At that point it was dusk, but we were both a little uneasy about camping near the town because border outposts always tend to attract interesting people, so we headed out into the nothing.

After driving about 20 kilometers, we again felt that we were not on the right road as we saw a little more traffic (two cars) on another track about a kilometer to the west of us. We crossed over… no medians to worry about here, and found what looked like a more well traveled jeep trail. At that point it was pretty much dark, so we parked the Toyotas and prepared to camp. We were definitely in the middle of nowhere and aside from an occasional truck passing by in the distance, were completely alone… or so we thought.

Within a few hours, we spotted headlights approaching from the south and they were headed directly, albeit circuitously, for where we had set up camp. The occupants of the car must have spotted the Tundra in the distance with their lights which is pretty easy to do considering everything is totally flat and it is pitch dark out. We began to wonder if we were camping on someone’s grazing land and they were coming to check us out. To our amazement, a late model Honda pulled up to our camp and four younger Mongolian guys popped out. They saw that we were white and started speaking to us in what sounded like broken Russian. It didn’t take long to realize that these guys, who smelled like they had been enjoying some of Mother Russia’s finest Vodka, were totally lost and looking for the road to UB as well. Unfortunately, we could not help them and they got back into their car and zig-zagged their way back across the desert in the direction of town.

Just a few random camels in the middle of nowhere

The desert offered up numerous additional random encounters and occurrences… everything from large birds of prey cowering down in fear at our presence to police quarantine checkpoints in the middle of absolutely nowhere. After about three days in the Gobi, we finally made it into Ulaanbaatar which both of us were amazed to find is no longer a backwater Soviet outpost, but a booming, thriving cosmopolitan city of nearly 800,000 inhabitants. However, in true Mongolian style, there is still a large degree of randomness here in the city. Traditional Mongolian gers (felt tents similar to Yurts) share real estate with towering skyscrapers under construction and you can still expect to have some interesting encounters with the locals.

Tired of your uptown condo in downtown UB?

You can keep it real… and random by visiting you local Yurt dealer

You can find them everywhere in the world, but still random to get your Guinness on in Mongolia

Just the other night, we were at a German brauhaus in central Ulaanbaatar (totally random in and of itself), when a local Mongolian guy approached our table. Again, it was obvious that he had been enjoying beer bingo at the bar and immediately started talking to us about the qualities and attributes of Mongolian women and how it would be his pleasure to introduce us to a few. After some more "conversation," we ascertained that "Bambo" was a Mongolian who had been living in Hungary for the past 14 years with his wife and son, but was back in Mongolia to visit his other wife and daughter. Morals aside, Bambo was friendly guy and shortly thereafter, invited us to come out to his countryside spread and go hunting with him. He informed us that we didn’t need to drive our own car because he had five and that he had enough pistols for everybody… he just needed to buy bullets before we left. He also assured us that there was plenty of things to shoot at and if we wanted a horse to ride, he had over 200 and he would literally give us one. Bambo had to get back to his other guests, but gave us his mobile number and said it would make him very happy if we called to take him up on his offer.

These are experiences that you can’t make up but seem too strange to be true. I am sure an interesting blog about our time spent with Bambo will be forthcoming, and the fact that we are going to go out and shoot things with a strange Mongolian guy we met at a bar makes me question my own sanity, but when in Rome I guess… and I have a feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg.

By Steve Bouey | Posted in For some laughs, Mongolia, Trip Thoughts | Comments (1)

Did you Know? – Home Security

By Steve Bouey in

September 19, 2007 – 4:56 am

Here is another facet of life and the way people do things here in Asia that is kind of interesting. Just like anywhere else in the world, people want to protect their homes and businesses from intruders and install security devices to ensure that their property is safe. In the west, we might use an alarm or barbed wire to protect property. In Asia, alarms are in use here and there but alarms are expensive and so is barbed wire. Not to worry, there is plenty of broken glass laying around and with a little bit of work, it can be just as effective at keeping people from hopping your wall as razor wire.

There is a saying throughout much of SE Asia, although it is popularized in Thailand the most;"same same but different." I hate this saying because people use it so much to describe the similarities between the west and the east or anything else for that matter, that they actually make T-shirts that are a common site on the backs of many farang/falang in the hostels and bars of the region. As much as I hate the phrase, I guess it is appropriate in this instance. Glass placed properly in some cement on top of your wall is just as effective as barbed wire. Furthermore, it is also a good visual deterrent… I definitely would not want to try climbing this wall even if I had all of my shots.

By Steve Bouey | Posted in Trip Thoughts | Comments (1)

One of the Coolest Roads in The World

By Steve Bouey in

September 16, 2007 – 10:47 am

Since our main mode of transportation around the world is by truck, we are always looking for interesting, scenic, and sometimes dangerous roads to drive our Toyotas down. We are constantly on the lookout for something amazing or out of the ordinary because you just never know when you will be driving your own vehicle in that part of the world again. Good locations and photos also help to keep some of our sponsors happy!

We came across one such location in China and came across it totally by accident. I was at a hostel in Xi An explaining our trip to a woman from France. This woman was thoroughly excited about what we were doing and was asking a lot of questions, particularly about the route and the dangers we may encounter while driving our own vehicles. One topic led to another until finally we started talking about "the most dangerous road in the world." There is a road outside of La Paz, Bolivia that typically holds the title as being the most dangerous road in the world among travelers and thrill seekers and we both concluded it was quite dangerous.

After our discussion, I searched for a few photos of the road in Bolivia and I happened across an obscure blog about another dangerous road. The weblog was actually defending the title of the road in Bolivia against another road which happened to be somewhere in China. The blog did not contain many details about where this road was located, but it did have some pretty crazy photos and it was enough for Steve and I to determine that we had to drive the Thundra and Little Pepe on it. The only information the blog gave was the name of the village the road leads to and a bit of history about why it was built. The road was actually carved into the cliffs by the villagers themselves over the course of many years upon learning that the government would not build a road to make it easier for them to get to the next town down the valley to trade for and purchase supplies. Driving the road in China itself is not necessarily that dangerous (hence the blog defending the road in Bolivia), however, it certainly was dangerous to build and a false move or a bad decision could ruin your day and those to come for sure.

Finding exactly where the road was and if we would come near it on our journey through China proved to be a fairly difficult mission to accomplish. None of the guidebooks mentioned how to find the village and it was not on any of our maps… not on our western maps or on our guide Jasons Chinese maps. Still determined to find out where this road was, we began to reveal more clues as to the location of this village and the road using creative web searches and having Jason speak with locals about it. To make our task more difficult, the blog either intentionally or unintentionally placed the road in the incorrect Chinese province. After three days of research and Jason spending many hours talking with locals and hitting the streets, we finally found what we thought was the location of this road, but we could not be 100 percent certain unless we got closer. Getting closer entailed driving about 300 kilometers and many hours out of our way on backcountry provincial roads. It was a gamble, but it certainly paid off as we found the location of the village and the road.

Interestingly enough, the place is actually fairly popular as a local tourist spot… enough so that they charge an admission fee to walk the road and another fee to drive on it. However, it was still pretty far off any tourist path and people were actually pretty amazed that we had managed to find it. One couple was totally surprised that westerners with their own cars had actually found the village. The road was so amazing, the views from the top so breathtaking, and the history behind the village so interesting, we were surprised that Lonely Planet or any other guidebook publisher had yet to identify or include it in their books. It is a pretty difficult place to get to, is not really close to any major cities and is not conveniently served by any form of public transportation, so that may be why it is still somewhat of a secret spot. In any regard, it is there if you put in the work to find it. At this point, all we are going to do is reveal a little bit of information about this place. The village is located just outside the town of XinXiang in Henan province and starts with a G and some people refer to the road as the village’s tunnel. With some creative research and local assistance, you too can experience the road and all that it has to offer if you ever find yourself in this part of China. Until then you will just have to enjoy some of our photos of definitely one of the craziest roads in the world.