Russia and Outer Mongolia

We have made it. We've driven over 13,000 miles across Europe and Asia to finally arrive in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. The Russia we experienced wasn't the Russia we imagined. First of all, the tarmac was amazing. None of the pothole rubbish that we had in Kazakhstan but rather kilometre after kilometre of wonderfully smooth tarmac. I get that part of the trip was about driving on awful roads but after the Pamirs and Kazakhstan, none of us were complaining. Say what you want about Putin but he certainly knows how to build a road. Secondly, the scenery in Russia blew us away. The Altai region was up there with the Pamir Highway for the most incredible views of our trip. It echoes the Alps in many regards yet the beer is reasonably priced and petrol is dirt cheap. The campsites were amazing and it was only the alarmingly high horsefly population that did Russia a discredit. Given that Russian tarmac was amazing, the car now only had to do 1600km on bad roads through Mongolia and so with this mission in mind we approached the Russian/Mongolian border. We weren't expecting this border to be too much of a hardship and it went fairly well for about the first 3 minutes as they let us into the border zone. From then on in, the Russian side at least was a bit of a struggle.  They asked us for our Russian customs form which stumped us a bit because we weren't given a Russian customs form; we thought that the whole system was electronic. ​​At this point I showed him all the forms I had and for some reason it was only when he saw the Kyrgyzstan customs form that he was satisfied. Not sure what that was all about. They then let us through the gates into the 28km of no-mans land between the two countries. At 14km you leave the Russian side and so also leave the gloriously smooth tarmac. The Mongolian's appear not to have bothered to tarmac a bit of land that they don't actually own - fair enough. Mongolian customs was fairly easy once we had paid our $1 disinfectant fee and so we set off into the middle of nowhere on characteristically bad Mongolian roads, or so we thought. After about 30km the corrugation ended and there lay the most amazingly smooth road that had 'made in China' all over it. Given that it was Mongolia there was no one on it and so slightly surprisingly our recorded top speed (which I won't disclose for fear of a bollocking from my parents) was recorded in Mongolia. However, sadly the roads didn't last and for much of the next 5 days we were driving alongside the half built road, not on it. Mongolia is a seriously cool place. I don't fancy that there are many other places in the world that give off such a atmosphere of nothingness. You can drive for hours along what is the main road in Mongolia and yet only see a couple of yurts and a few packs of wild horses. The people are unbelievably hospitable as well and we managed to get ourselves invited into a traditional Mongolian wedding. It was quite clear that at such an occasion there were clearly do's and don'ts and we definitely made a few balls ups. The biggest was properly when we downed our shots of Mongolian vodka only to see to our horror that the chap next to us took a gentle sip. Not good. However, their hospitality continued and whenever we pitched camp, someone would come out of nowhere to greet us and welcome us to their country. The roads got steadily worse to the point where it was no more than farmers tracks with the result that about 7 tracks to chose from, each as bad as the next. The Subaru didn't particularly appreciate this but 6 days later she pulled into the parking spot outside Burger King in Ulaanbaatar. It still is hard for us to believe that we have driven all this way and we will be certainly sad to see the Subaru shipped home. Its now a week working with the Lotus Children's Centre here before we take the train down into Beijing!