The road from Khovd to Altay, Mongolia. Having woken up early, with the sun coming up over the mountains, I grab the shovel and the loo roll and head off into the brightness to take a shit under a telegraph pole. Yes, I am a man.
There's something hearty and primal about the faecal act when one is out in the mountains. Especially when you come to bury it afterwards. It's like you're finally giving something back. 'Hello world. I love you. And I made you this.'
The idea was to be up and off by 8am - it'd be good to see what sort of mileage we're capable of on these roads when we're not waiting around most of the day for people to patch up their motors or purchase super-noodles. We're due to face our route's most infamous stretch of road today. It's a known car-killer. We're not sure why exactly, but we've been told to fear the worst for 200km.
But that's all a while away. Once again we have to sit around most of the morning waiting for the Skoda team to patch up their motor. Their gearbox needs tweaking so they can hobble on into the next town. So we eat a supernoodle breakfast and drink coffee, and then Jeff wanders off with the shepherd's staff he found yesterday, telling us to pick him up on our way past. We're now due out of here at 10am.
We kick our heels longer - more coffee, a few keep-ups and a bit of reading. While Jeff is away, Steve and I replace him on the team with a recently-filled bin-bag. He instantly fits right in. We decide he's hilarious. It's a shame in a way, as I quite liked Jeff.
We finally get back on the move at 11.30, which means Jeff has been wandering alone in the wilderness for about two hours. I seem to remember Jesus doing a similar thing. We find him about three miles down the track, a wild look in his eye and a camel's skull jammed onto the end of his staff.
A little while longer and he'd have had a massive beard, a load of followers and a B-tech in carpentry. As it is he's spent his time in the wilderness honing his woeful lack of knowledge of lizards:
It feels great to be back on the road. Movement is special. The music's on and the scenery is, once again, breathtaking. If wild. At one point we pass five eagles sitting on adjacent telegraph poles. While Steve drives, it's my job to scan the road for skulls. The holy grail is to find one with two horns intact. Instead I find a cow carcass. We decide against gaffer-taping it to the side of the Punto.
The sun's out. Again. In fact we're gradually dropping down out of the mountains and it's getting notably hotter.
We pull into a town for supplies. Fuck me. It's like a Wild West frontier town. Leather-faced dudes ride the streets on horse-back. Old men hang out on front steps, surrounded by Chinese motorbikes. One guy comes past and whips the front of our car. Everyone's drunk. I go into a shop to get water, and when I come out Jeff and Steve are urging me back into the car sharpish. Apparently Jeff had started giving out badges, which quickly turned into a scrum. People were getting aggro. Better to be back on the road with our convoy, our tunes and our packet of Haribo.
We begin to see why this road is known as a car-killer. The main tracks are largely made up of long stretches of corrugations - long series of small parrallel bumps that you have to hit at a fair lick in order to get anything approaching a smooth ride. This extra speed only leaves you open to hitting big rocks. It's also incredibly slidey. The best bits are when there's a generaous coasting of gravel, which Mr W is happy to surf around in. Much of the drive is spent hopping from trail to adjacent trail, trying to avoid the corrugated sections.
It's not actually as bad as we'd expected. But it is bad. We develop a golden rule: go steady. If you drive at a suitable pace, you're almost certain to make it, as you can see stuff early enough. Simple. The other teams in the convoy may seem plagued with bad luck - one team's had nine blow-outs so far, the other a punctured gear box and a problematic sump guard - but they're also going for it, speed-wise. Maybe we're just older and wiser, but we'd rather make it to the end than have to bow out because of overdoing it.
Which is how we do it all day. Until the evening, when Jeff's driving. The combination of the heavy rock of System of a Down and the sugar rush from our packet of congealed Jelly Babies puts him into a frenzied state. Suddenly we're in a race with one of the Mong Way Round cars, one that's been hooning it the whole time, bouncing round bends, sliding about and generally caning it.
Jeff's having the time of his life. Steve wakes up with his head hitting the ceiling. We stop to let others catch up. Steve gets out and inspects the back of the car. It's fucked. The weld on the springs has bent, pushing the whole lot against our brake pipes. Anger descends, and he gives Jeff a despairing assessment: 'You razzed it as hard as possible, on the worst section of road in the entire country.'
The mood isn't exactly bright as we hobble on to our camp. So nearly there - we'd almost nailed the worst road in the place. Now we're back to square one. Tomorrow we have to make it the 130km to Altay, and get our back end fixed again. The only option: set up camp and drink more vodka...
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