Wild goose Chase.

We collected Louise and Emily from the airport. They bumped into Jeff's mum ( Stews's friends mum) on the plane! Pure coincidence! Fist stop was the top of a hill we slept the night before.

With everyone sitting on the roof of the van we drove up the steep slope to the top.  Louise gave me the exhaust repair section my parents bought from Chris Mullins, Gloucester. Thanks mum and dad! Photo.

We cracked the beers open and enjoyed the view. On the way up the hill the power steering pump belt rubbed through the radiator top hose pissing water everywhere. We fixed it with duck tape and left the rad cap off. Not long after, a Shepard on horseback rode up to the van. He stared intriguingly for a while then we offered him a beer. After trying to trade his horse for Dunny's bike we declined but agreed to meet him at 3 PM at his Ger for food.

We topped the van up with water and drove it down the hill to his Ger. He fed us boiled mutton, fermented horse milk, snuff, and let us ride his horses, in exchange we let him drive our van. We said our farewells and drove back to UB.

In UB me and Dunny replaced the broken section of exhaust. We met Andy and Sarah who were brits doing the trans Siberian express and travelling further. We had beers whilst fitting the exhaust and drove Andy and Sarah to the same spot at the top of the hill to watch the sunset and for more beers. Was a good night!

Stew, Louise and Emily met Sanchez again, who invited us to a Nadaam festival 5 hours drive away from UB. Spot on. We met Maurice at the hostel, a Dutch guy, who also wanted to join us to the nadamm festival.

I met Helen at the airport the following day and set off for the festival. 8 people and luggage in the van, we were on our way!

The first night we stopped at a ger camp to celebrate their 10th anniversary. Big party with the locals. The night finished with the father Abraham song, the locals weren't used to that sort of behavior! "Put your boxers in your mouth and run around the ger".

What we expected to be a 5 hour drive, turned out to be two days across mud, and we were still one day's drive away from the festival. We hit a thunder storm and the van nearly got stuck in mud a few more times, pretty dodgy. After making our way to a hotel and Ger camp in the next town me and Helen decided to give up on the festival, we had to get back to UB to sort our visas.

We met a guy called Bat who could help us.

Rob