The day starts in spectacular fashion as an eagle swoops down just inches from my head, grabs something small and furry and glides away over the valley. Incredible. The speed, surprise and power is stunning. The road is reasonable, a mix of hard dry mud and dusty loose gravel, running alongside what looks like a new road being built. At the top of a hill there is another of the shrines people tie blue cloth to for luck, so i tie on a piece of one of my tie straps that has broken. After stopping for petrol in Bulgan, we leave town on a perfect stretch of tarmac, and when it doesn’t peter out after a few miles like most other stretches we begin to think it might go all the way to the capital. So suddenly it seems we might be in UB a day or two sooner than we hoped. It’s a long ride, though, and at the end of the day we’ve clocked up 370 miles, 100 of them on dirt, making it one of the longest rides of the trip. Arriving in UB requires another death defying dash through city traffic until we eventually find a suitable looking hotel. It’s absolutely amazing to be here, to have gone so far on my bike. We have dinner that is a mix of Chinese and Thai, then Dave says he’s tired so we return to the hotel.
Day 71 Mongolia day 10
3 Aug