Day 32 Wednesday 30th July. Near Bulgan Mongolia

We were off and making good progress on a hot sunny day when David who was steaming ahead, trailblazing at great speed caught the front tyre on a sharp rock causing a massive puncture. He fought with it for several hundred yards, scrubbing speed off until gently putting it down on a steep and fast downhill section. For the record, this was his first off. David now has more sympathy with his colleagues who have also gently laid their bikes down, all be it in considerably more occasions!
He was fine, the bike was slightly bruised but most importantly he punched a hole in his large pan that he keeps handy in his side tank pannier, and that he uses to make a quick brew!!

Puncture repair took longer than expected. We used a new inner tube and then nipped it when putting the tyre back on so we then had to do patches on the new tube. Eventually got it all back together and the tyre went flat. We looked everywhere but could not detect another, and so put it all back together again and it has been ok ever since. All in all the incident took us about 1 and a half hours out in the scorching sun.










We did lots of hard riding with quite difficult transitions getting on and off new sections of road that had not yet been opened to public use.

Later as we were priding along we saw lots of large birds flocking around something. It turned out to be a dead horse and the birds were vultures just about to start dinner.






Geoff's bikes rev counter failed, and then when we stopped to look at a potential camping site the bike was dead and would not restart. So the campsite had been chosen by events and as Paul and Dave prepared the evening meal Frank and Geoff started to investigate the problem.





We were fooled for a long while because the battery was showing 12 volts when disconnected, but dropping to a low voltage when the ignition was turned on.

We did tests looking for a faulty circuit that was causing the battery voltage to be sucked down, but could not find anything responsible. In the end it started to get very cold and so we abandoned the repairs and reverted to just drinking beer around a fantastic campfire that Dave provided the wood for and Frank chopped into burnable pieces with Dave's super axe!

The evening meal was curried Tuna with cabbage a very rare vegetable in Mongolia.

More later
RRs




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