Some news from Mongolia Blog written by The Hunky Dorys who are traveling in convoy with Damo and Brendan. So the problem with our insurance was that it only covered the owner of the vehicle (I.e Carmel and not me), plus only lasted 5 days instead of 30. Lesson learnt: check the paperwork matches what the insurance peddler says… That meant that Carmel was doing the driving until I could get insured (700km away). Long day for Carmel then and made even longer by my inability to stay awake as a passenger. So as far as I was concerned only three things really happened, firstly we helped another local out of the mud (and I nearly lost my flipflops), secondly it rained in massively hectic bursts and thirdly the sad story (albeit with a resolution) of a Belgian solar cyclist we’d met. We’d parked up for a break nearby to a fairly crazy looking tandem cycle with solar panels fixed to the front and to a trailer it was towing. The owner was seemingly absent, but given this was in the middle of nowhere this a bit strange. Whilst we were examining the bike (it had the same disc brakes as my downhill bike) we worked out the owner could only be in the railway workers hut nearby. After a few minutes a wiry looking, heavily tanned, European man left the hut and immediately burst into floods of tears. Based on his appearance he was clearly the bike’s owner and our first reaction was that some very serious news had just been received. Once he’d recovered from his emotion we asked what was wrong and found out more about him. His name was Gregory, and was a Belgian competing in a solar bike race from Champery in France to Astana in Kazakhstan (short race then!). He was riding solo (his wife would ride with him after the race) and had been going for 2 months. The solar power was providing only a 30% assist but he was riding up to 240km a day! Anyway, the previous night he’d stayed with the railway worker who’d invited him in and given him coffee and milk to take away but had then inexplicably turfed him out at 1am in the night. You don’t want to be on these roads at night in a car let alone on a bike. Gregory went for 60km before discovering that his former host had stolen his money and his mp3 player. Seeing as the nearest Atm would be 500km away and his mp3 player his only company for the remaining week or two of his ride he decided to turn back and confront the worker (with no guarantees of success). Now we understood his emotion; half a day of riding (120km) lost in a 2-3 month race, half a day to think about what happened and what might happen and some small success although against the massive disappointment of betrayal, all after 2 months of effort (and loads more preparation). We offered him fruit, water and most importantly a beer to enjoy later – hopefully some small gesture to help him to the finish, although we wished the sun would come out too to help him along. Of course one other thing did happen; the Kazakh roads were predictably awful. Made worse by the rain, there was a 5km diversion through a muddy field complete with mini lakes. This is a real rally…
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 09:37:07 +0000
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