so we just had the craziest adventure ever here in monglia. i don't think most people will believe everything is true and not exagerated or from a script of a bad movie, but everything below actually happened to us in the last 3 days... will also write a post about our amazing trips in khovd later on...
we were supposed to catch a flight from khovd back to UB on wednesday. on tuesday we had adiya (from the guesthouse in khovd) call the airline to see what time the plane's departing since it's not really standard/predictable. turns out there was a problem, the plane was stuck in moron because of a runway (asphalt) problem so the plane can't take off and all the flights for the next week are cancelled. problem for us since we had a plane to catch from UB to beijing on thursday morning.
adiya spent the whole afternoon helping us and the best solution we could come up with was to take a car back to UB (~2 days drive), get a refund for the non-used air ticket in UB and buy new train tickets to beijing leaving saturday morning. as long as we were in UB by 6pm friday afternoon, that would be no problem. he found us a car (we thought it'd be more comfortable and get there faster than the bus), a subaru forester (very rare in mongolia), good condition, the driver seemed nice, and pretty cheap (~$35/pp for the 2 day, 1450 km journey).
we left khovd wednesday morning, there was an older monk in the car, the driver, and a mongolian girl. on our way out of town, the mongolian girl decided she didn't want to go so we dropped her and her 70 kg bag of potatoes off at her house and went to the bus station to recruit a new passenger. by chance, there was an american, alex from tennessee, there looking for a bus. he agreed to come along. little did we know that we got him into an adventure of a lifetime...
first sign that things would be fun is the driver let the monk drive shortly after leaving khovd. the monk is learning and doesn't know how to shift very well, the car goes across the road when he shifts. nothing scary, just amusing to see the monk drive.
stopped for lunch a few hours in and the driver drank 1/2 a bottle of vodka with his friend. needless to say he was really, really drunk. the monk also performed a ceremony to bless the house and occupants, which was really cool to see. no one would let the driver drive, so alex took a shot, but hit too many rocks so the monk took over for a bit. then erick drove for a good hour or more. while erick was driving, the driver sat in the back with me an alex trying to "learn" english and asking us how to pronounce the words on the cover and back of slaughterhouse-five. when he deemed himself successful, he hugged me and kissed both my and alex's hand. then asked our names several times and wouldn't believe me when i said i'm american, so i finally agreed that i'm chinese, not american.
finally at a pee spot, the driver wanted to drive and the monk deemed it was okay. we think the monk owns the car and the driver is hired just to drive, since the monk was cleaning the car at every stop and the driver rarely even inspected the car, even after rough terrain or when we hit rocks or a big bump. driver drove, still very drunk, cranked up the music very loud and started singing for along time. alex reached up a couple times to turn the volume down but it just crept back up. we were all dozing in the back and the driver lost control of the car (either fell asleep or b/c he was drunk) and drove off the road, nearly flipping the car. he got it under control, back on the road, and luckily no one was hurt. drove a bit longer until a ger in at midnight where we slept.
next day driver and monk were alternating driving in the morning. on monk's drive, he hit 2 parallel tire tracks (all dirt roads) going 60 km/h and the car flew off the ground and landed hard. end result, both front and back axles bent (back much worse). driver didn't even get out to look at it and monk didn't realize the severity of the problems (erick and alex went out to look at it and quickly realized the severity of the problem). we drove another 0.5 km and the tire blew up, completely shredded from rubbing on the wheel well from the bent axle. since it's a subie, only a donut spare tire, which was actually good b/c a full size spare would've just rubbed and blown up shortly after.
we drove another 600 km on dirt then paved roads on the spare tire, including a little detour when the driver got lost. they looked for a new tire at a town but no luck (no one stocks that tire) so we kept driving on it.
today we were in a hurry to get back to UB to purchase our train tickets by 6 pm. we stopped for lunch and were making pretty good time on paved road, then reached arvaikheer (430 km from UB). the driver stopped at an auto shop (we thought to look for a new tire) and we spent 1/2 hour + getting the car washed and detailed! before setting out on more dirt roads. unbelievable! erick and i were pretty anxious and told them we had to get to the train station by 6 pm and they said they understood.
drove another 250 km or so, driver was getting pretty confident and flying at 130 km/h on the spare tire. even newly paved roads in mongolia still have potholes or else big chunks of asphalt cut out of them for no logical reason. driver hit on of these at 130 km/h and the spare tire blows. we were done for since there's no other spare and we still had a ways to UB.
we were lucky it's a busy road and the 3 of us (erick, alex, me) flagged down a car within 10 minutes, left the monk and driver with the problem car, and got a ride back to UB. didn't make it to the train station in time so thought about flying, but the guesthouse got us tickets to beijing on tomorrow's train and we'll finally be leaving (hopefully). this little adventure ended up costing us $520 in the forfeited purchased train ticket and the non-refunded unused plane ticket (we can't get a refund b/c we won't be in UB when the MIAT office is open). small price to pay though since we made it back to UB in one piece and we're still alive and uninjured...
pictures will be posted sometime, probably not soon since not sure if we can use picasa in china...
1 comment:
What a nightmare!
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