We went as fast out of Ulaanbaatar as we could. I really didn’t want to stay in that city anymore. We even drove the Mongolian roads in the dark. It was a good tarmac road, but it was still challenging to see and evade the occasional axle-breaking potholes with the headlights of oncoming traffic flashing in our eyes.

I felt very heavy about driving and being in Mongolia; I just wanted to go to the next country in the hope that I would feel better.

But Racki still felt like exploring, and I didn’t want to block her wish to visit the famous Gobi Desert, so we went in that direction.

And because we needed to pick up our Chinese visas in Ulaanbaatar in about ten days, the route was set: 700 km from Ulaanbaatar to the Gobi Desert, 700 km back to Ulaanbaatar, and from Ulaanbaatar finally another 700 km to the Chinese border. 2100 km of Mongolian roads and maybe a bit of offroad tracks… We talked with a couple of people about this trip and they were all very sure that the main roads we would take were in very good condition.

And so we went to our first stop: Mandalgovi. We went there to meet our friends Merel and Leon, whose parents came to visit them from the Netherlands. Our idea was that we would go to the famous Naadam in a bigger town, but not in Ulaanbaatar.

Racki and I found the stadium where most of the festival activities would take place, but it looked absolutely deserted.

And our friends, who had come to Ulaanbaatar a week ago with a serious clutch problem on their car, had big trouble trying to have it fixed. They had found a workshop that was confident in its capabilities to fix the issue, but they could only organize a used clutch of unknown condition for a couple thousand Euros. So they had ordered the parts to their parents in the Netherlands, who got them just in time and brought them along by airplane. But the garage fucked it up badly and broke the spare parts while trying to install them. So their car problem story was not about to get solved, but to intensify in the next few days, and we were not able to meet.

Racki and I found a place to camp in Mandalgovi, but for me, it was one of the ugliest places I had seen so far in Mongolia: boring steppe, dried-out river, animal cadavers, lots of trash, and industrial buildings not far away. We did the best we could, practiced archery, I started a new EDM song with the name Ugly Mongolia, and I was happy about drinking more beer than usual.

The next morning, we headed off in the direction of the Gobi Desert, and out of nowhere, we came across a car accident near a fuel station in Mandalgovi. A truck had hit a car. Only two people were at the scene, standing next to each other, and one dead woman was sitting in the car. I don’t know why, but we just rolled past the accident and continued on our way. I was very sorry for everybody involved in that accident, and at any other point in time, we would have stopped and tried to help or at least tried to ask if help was needed, but at that moment, we didn’t. At that moment, my brain just said: this is it, this is Mongolia, nothing you can do about it. Later, Racki and I talked about it, and we were both absolutely sure that the woman was dead and there was nothing to do, nothing to help. But still, I feel bad about this even months later.

We continued our way and drove a whole lot. The roads were very good asphalt roads, and we only came across two Mongolian construction sites. A Mongolian construction site means: everybody goes off the road into the steppe and finds their way to the end of the construction site to re-enter the road. Sometimes there is one track beside the construction site, sometimes there are ten.

In the last big town before the famous sand dunes of the Gobi Desert, we went to a big supermarket and tried to find out when the Naadam Festival would take place in that town. This was not easy either. I don’t know why, but sometimes in Mongolia, we tried asking a couple of locals something and no one was in the mood to deal with us and our translator app. They were just grumpy. So these things can become a marathon of asking people until we find someone friendly. Eventually, we found a very friendly Mongolian girl, and she told us that Naadam had ended a couple of days ago.

So we decided to just skip the idea of witnessing another, bigger Naadam and continued in the direction of the sand dunes.

At the start of the offroad track, we checked the play in our front differential again and decided to install the outer CV joint we had bought in Ulaanbaatar to detach the front differential from the driver’s side wheel in a safe way.

It was already getting pretty late, but we decided to continue because I just wanted to reach a place where we would love to stay for a few days to rest.

This 100 km offroad track turned out to be the worst we had ever taken! In the beginning, it was an ordinary Mongolian steppe track, but soon it became a route leading through dried-out, bumpy, and narrow tracks. It got darker and darker, but I just did not want to stay somewhere and drive again the next day, so we pushed on.

The tracks on OSM were pretty accurate and Rosinante’s high beam was amazing, but the track led into dried riverbeds with lots of fine sand, and driving became more and more demanding. Without 4x4, in the dark, we took a wrong turn and ended up in a narrow side arm of a dried riverbed with lots of sand. Slowing down was not an option because that would have caused us to get stuck, so we pushed through. Rosinante was jumping around, and we made it back to the main track.

But the main track led into another riverbed that was wider and easier to navigate, but had even more fine sand. We pushed and pushed. At one point, we came across a stuck limousine and some guys trying to free it. I slowed down just a bit, but realized that without 4x4 and proper low gear we would get stuck as well very soon, so we pushed on.

In the dark with the high beam, we lost the track once more and ended up on a field of big stones. Rosinante rumbled over the stones, and again, slowing down was only an option to a certain amount of momentum, so we kept pushing and finally, after about fourteen hours of traveling that day—including the last four hours spent on those final 100 km—we made it…

…to this nice spot at the sand dunes. We went to bed, and I was so happy not to be driving the next day—to just rest and enjoy.

And so we played around, worked on our archery skills, played frisbee, and did our own thing. It felt so good to just be there and especially to have no car topics on our minds regarding Rosinante.

One day, our friends Tanja and Marcel visited us. They took another route to the sand dunes and told us that their way involved crossing very long fields of very fine sand, and that they thought it would not be possible for heavy cars like ours without 4x4 and proper low gear. So there they were again: the car topics…

Not being able to take their route left only two options: going back on the four-hour, 100 km track that we had taken to get here, or taking another unknown one… Tanja and Marcel said they would try the other option in the coming days, so we agreed on them reporting the conditions of that track to us once they did it.

We talked about our differential as well, and Marcel was of the opinion that detaching one front wheel would potentially be even more harmful to the differential. Car topics… I researched it more and found out that, in our case, the actuator assembly would automatically detach the passenger’s side wheel from the differential in 2WD. This, combined with detaching our driver’s side wheel like we did, was most likely the perfect way to ensure no harm came to the differential, because now both wheels were detached. Honestly, it was hard for me to trust in this after all the back-and-forth… But I tried my best to convince myself…

This was the biggest dune around, so Racki and I set off to climb it for a sunset.

It was a nice climb up the dunes.

And the dunes looked astonishing.

The sand made interesting sounds and vibrations.

And by the minute, the colors were changing.

At the top, we had a fantastic view and enjoyed our time.

Tanja and Marcel had found a nice spot in the dunes, and from above, we could see them. Marcel sent his drone over to capture this nice shot. The background music is one of my EDM tracks, “Occurrence,” which I published some weeks later:

That’s the full track.

The sunset was amazing!

On the way back to Rosinante, we had lots of fun trying to slide down the dunes on our old picnic blanket.

And the nights were calm, and the stars looked amazing.

We hit a new low humidity record of 15%. I think at one point it was even 14%. And we had two or three pretty intense sandstorms. They did not last long, but there was a lot of sand! If we were too slow to close Rosinante’s hatch, we ended up with lots of fine sand inside our cabin.

But I just liked staying in one place for a couple of days—not moving the car, just enjoying and resting…

During our time in Mongolia, Racki and I became pretty lazy when it came to exercise. There were almost no nice hikes, and climbing was not possible either. So we started exercising again. Here is me jumping in a fairly intense sandstorm.

Tanja and Marcel reported that the third option to leave the sand dunes was actually not too bad, so we took it as well. On the way, we heard an increasingly bad metallic scratching and bumping sound. Car topics again…

We decided not to ignore it, but to investigate. After half an hour of driving slowly with one of us hanging off the side of the vehicle while standing on one of the rocksliders, we found it! It was a big washer scratching against one of the rocksliders.

Later, we lost another screw from Rosinante’s underbody armor and decided to bend the body armor back into its original shape. We were very happy with the solution we found to bend it back precisely.

The track was really fine, and we arrived at the Flaming Cliffs.

These cliffs were a very famous tourist attraction, and they looked very nice.

There were all kinds of shapes and ever-changing colors.

The view from our camp spot: on one side, the cliffs…

…on the other side, the sun.

And there were stars all over the place!

Disappointed that we could not go climbing and that this national park close to Ulaanbaatar was so crowded and that we couldn’t find a nice camp spot, we continued driving north. We ended up driving for very long, and at some point, the nice asphalt road ended and turned into a dirt road which partly became pretty Mongolian (bumpy, potentially car-breaking).

I got more and more frustrated, though Racki was doing not too bad. But for me, all these shitty broken roads added to the stress I felt about our differential problem. More and more, Mongolia became a place to me that I wanted to leave as soon as possible. The negative aspects of this wild country became more and more heavy, and I just wanted to park somewhere and try to relax.

But there was no nice place to park. No option to relax. There was only driving in Mongolia…

We found a nice camp spot on iOverlander which was located on the other side of a river, and when we reached that river, I should have known…

A lot of cars were parked on the shore of the river. I realized that and instantly felt that this is not very Mongolian. Mongolians tend to go everywhere with their cars, no matter what car they have.

Driving a bit further, we saw only the old Russian jeeps and trucks passing us, and from our experience, this always means: shit, the track is going to be wild, offroad, and mostly not desirable for Rosinante. I realized this as well and even told Racki…

When we came to a halt in front of the river, I felt so tired, stressed, exhausted, and so desperate to find a place to rest and relax that I just engaged the low gear and drove into the thirty-meter-wide river crossing without checking it or watching another car do it first.

It went fine at first, then it got deeper. The water came over Rosinante’s hood, and we lost momentum at an alarming rate. I felt the wheels slipping, the water caught Rosinante from the side, and I felt her moving sideways. I countersteered, pushed harder, more water hit the hood, we got slower, and finally we reached the other side and made it out of that river.

We made it through a small, muddy forest and quickly realized that there were not many options to go back. I could not just park; I wanted to know if there was an easy way out of this. So we took a walk down the river, only to find out that further down, the river crossing was much worse.

So we were trapped on the other side of the river with a lot of camps, but we found a nice, pretty quiet place in the forest.

Racki was happy because we had some ok bread with us.

I tried to enjoy that nice, calm place… with the differential topic in the back…

…and with the big, big river in front.

We checked this crossing, which was way longer than the one we took.

The Russian trucks made it easily. But it was deep as well. Maybe even deeper than the other one.

We marked the water level at both options we had to cross this river.

Racki talked to some locals who were living on that side of the river. They normally crossed the river at one particular spot in a very specific way, but they said at the moment it was not possible because the water level and current were higher than usual.

We checked their way to cross that river, but to do that one, we would have to first take an easy crossing to a stone island in the river and then face the current coming from the side before turning completely against it.

I was not happy with that option either.

We waited a couple of days, and when the water level was at least no higher than when we crossed the river the first time, we started our mission to cross the river at the longer crossing. First we had to go through a couple of muddy sections, smaller crossings, and easy parts.

Then we reached the real crossing. It looked so long… and deep… Racki checked it for the last time, and we decided that we would take the path through the river that the locals were taking, not the one we thought might be better.

Racki was positive about the crossing, while I felt stressed and exhausted, though I gained some hope as we started the crossing. And it all went very well. It was deep, and Rosinante lost some momentum in the process, but it was not too bad, and we were so happy to have made it back!

On our way back to Ulaanbaatar, we came across this dinosaur park.

It had been a yurt camp, but the camp itself was closed and run-down.

But I loved these dinosaur statues.

Mostly because they just fit so well into the scenery.

And of course, I always love dinosaurs. They are my family.

And then we were back in Ulaanbaatar—which had already become one of those places I felt happy about only when leaving it.

We visited the black market, which was very interesting and super diverse. You could buy anything at that place: horse stuff…

…shamanic stuff…

…DVDs, and so much more.

And then Racki and I felt like we deserved something nice. When I found an archery shop on Google Maps, we went to it, and it turned out to be super nice! A great shop with nice, happy, and friendly staff, and handmade Mongolian bows and arrows. So we bought a nice set!

And then we continued dealing with the differential topic! We communicated with and met other mechanics, along with some people who seemed to just want to talk… At one point, we had Rosinante at a garage a friend had recommended. A handful of mechanics checked the issue; all were confident that they would be able to fix it somehow, and all were of the opinion that getting spare parts would take weeks, if it were possible at all. But they were all pretty positive and especially praised the skills of one Russian mechanic on their team. Then the boss of the garage came and told us that he didn’t want a job like this at his garage because nobody knew what the exact problem was, and because of the spare parts situation and the big Naadam Festival that was about to start in a week.

So we decided to not have anything done to Rosinante’s differential anymore! We went to another car garage, and after measuring used parts, they organized a cheap outer CV joint for us. Since nobody knew how bad our differential was, our plan was to take this spare part with us; if the differential got worse, we would use it to detach the side with the play from the wheel in a way that might not kill us.

Horses on a mini truck. The nice side of life…

And then it was time to pick up our visas for China from the Chinese consulate in Ulaanbaatar. We had started the process online weeks ago and had paid the fees at a Chinese bank, so the next step was to bring our passports and get our visas. We went to the Chinese consulate and handed the lady at the counter our passports. But instead of telling us to wait a few minutes, she told us that we would be able to pick up our passports next week, after the Naadam Festival.

I personally hoped to leave this city as soon as possible and never come back. And now we had to stay, or spend some more time on shitty Mongolian tracks… I was not happy at all.

Together with our friends Merel and Leon, we spent some time in a coffee shop, but for me it was not easy. All the stress I felt—the differential, Mongolia—and now we would have to return to Ulaanbaatar again…

We went to a good camp spot close to a river where we had stayed before. It was a famous picnic spot for locals, but we had found a nice, calm spot.

We checked the front differential oil to see if there were a lot of metal pieces in it—something none of the mechanics had done so far.

After encountering an absolutely drunken Mongolian guy who was missing half an ear and bleeding heavily, we…

…practiced shooting our bow and fell in love with it instantly. It felt so nice. We were very happy to have David Bowie (the name of the bow) on our team.

And we met Lucki again! A very good friend whom we had met in Kazakhstan before and who had experienced a lot of car troubles in Mongolia as well. His stories were much more dramatic than ours: engine failure, and after months of organizing and repairing the car in Mongolia, his girlfriend went too fast on a Mongolian track and broke the car again.

But he was a very skilled mechanic and did everything on his own. We asked him to check our front differential, and he said he would be worried if it were his car. But Racki and I stuck with our decision to have nothing done in Mongolia, hoping for a better spare parts situation in Laos, since we had heard that there were no Hiluxes in China.

And Luki told us that the very skilled Russian mechanic from one of the garages where we had been got arrested in Russia while trying a border run to reset his visa days. So we were even happier that we didn’t have that garage open our front differential.

We had a nice day with Lucki, and then finally, we left Ulaanbaatar again, only to return in a couple of weeks…