From Khuvsgul Lake we went south and to Murun again. There we found some friendly Mongolians who filled up our gas bottle, which was not that easy in the beginning, but when the guys saw that we had a lot of adapters for our bottle, they got curious and in the end, together we managed to fill the bottle up and had quite some fun doing that.
From Murun, we took another offroad track to a lake. The track was absolutely Mongolian, but we felt pretty used to it at that point and so it all went quite easily. At the shore of the lake there were billions of insects…
…and so we parked a bit away from the shore on a small hill where the wind was a bit stronger and there were fewer insects.
It was a beautiful lake, but we stayed only one night.
When we continued, we came across a regional Naadam and took a look around. I liked this game in which the players flicked pieces with their fingers to hit some targets.
Every player had a nice leather bag especially for his slide and stones.
There were plenty of opportunities for snacks, mostly served from small shops like this one.
The kids were playing some lottery games.
And the older people shot bows, which Racki and I felt to be very interesting and nice, so we said again that if we came across a nice bow and arrows, we should maybe get them.
Of course there were beautiful horses.
And the traditional wrestling.
The atmosphere between Racki and me was a bit tense. I’d say for no proper reason, but just because… of reasons. As can happen sometimes…
When we took a small corner just a couple of kilometers before our destination for the day, we came across some very drunken Mongolians who had somehow managed to crash their mini transporter against a pole at the side of the track and then crashed in reverse up a stone pile. We got our recovery stuff out, some sober Mongolians joined the party, and together we got the mini transporter back on the track again. The drunken guys were very happy and able to continue their drive.
Since we’d entered Russia, I had the impression that I was hearing and sometimes feeling a clonk sound when driving Rosinante, especially on little bumps, rocks, or corrugated tracks. At one moment that sound got more intense, and we stopped to have a look.
From previous sound diagnostics, we had learned to first remove Rosinante’s underbody armor because that useful but sometimes very annoying thing had misled our diagnoses quite a few times. While removing it, the thread of one of the screws fixating the body armor broke again. But that could not have been the source of the sound we were looking for.
Again, I tried to find the reason for that sound lying under Rosinante, and then I found it! It was the inner end of the driver’s side front CV shaft that had play—the part that was sticking into Rosinante’s front differential. I was not amused, and having this tension already between Racki and me, the first minutes after finding this on a very small track in Mongolia were not easy for me. We already knew how demanding the tracks were and how difficult it could be to find spare parts and have things repaired, based on experiences from friends who had visited Mongolia in the past.
And a damaged and maybe soon broken front differential—meaning no 4x4 and no low gear in Mongolia—sounded not good to me at all.
But just a couple of hundred meters away from where we found the source of the sound, we found a nice camp spot by a river, and Racki and I calmed down and started a constructive dialogue about what our options would be.
Meanwhile, the yaks enjoyed the refreshing water of the river and calmed down as well.
Racki and I contacted all the mechanic friends we had, and I started a topic on Reddit (you can read it here, but be warned, it contains some spoilers for future developments on that topic). After that and some more research, we got various opinions about the issue ranging from “I would not drive like this, could destroy the front differential” to “I’ve seen worse on a brand new Hilux” As always with car topics…
We decided that we would try our luck with the mechanics of the nearby village.
The people at the first garage were absolutely not motivated to deal with us and the translator app to have a look at our issue. The guys at the second garage were motivated and had a look, but lacked the right tool to investigate further. We needed a 36mm socket to proceed with our diagnosis. But one of the Mongolians told us via translator that we could go to his home and check if he had the right tool.
This guy was absolutely lovely. At his home, he had an old small truck with lots of used and some broken tools, and he had the right socket. So we decided that we would try our luck and check the issue with the help of that nice man.
We removed the CV shaft and found that the play was definitely at the inner part sticking into the differential. So we decided to detach it from the wheel to not stress it further and have it checked in a proper garage. In this photo you see the result of our work, and at that moment we felt very good about our decision. But oh boy, this will change soon…
The whole family of our new friend was super nice, and they showed us their beautiful Mongolian house. They gave us snacks and a very Mongolian drink that had been boiling all day on the stove: Mongolian tea with milk and vodka.
The father was very proud of the prizes and medals he got in horse races.
A friend or uncle, pretty drunk, joined us as well. It was super nice, and we felt very grateful that this man had helped us and that his family was so welcoming.
We decided to change our plans, take another potentially less demanding route to the volcano we wanted to visit, and then continue our way to Ulaanbaatar (the capital of Mongolia) to have Rosinante fixed. And if there were a nice garage on the way, we would maybe check Rosinante’s issue with them.
On the way, we came across these magnificent vultures.
There were quite a lot of them.
And we found these nice feathers.
And we met these guys, maybe searching for front differential topics for their cars, maybe TikTok, maybe Pornhub… Especially the fellow on the left impressed me with his elaborate technique for resting his head while eating and using his phone.