Gobi Desert (Sainshand)
Dry Run
We could have done more to know more.
We had made it to dusty Zamyn Uud after a sleeper train from Beijing, passing the spaced-out mudbrick houses of Inner Mongolia before being stamped through the border town of Erlian and into the real Mongolia.
Apart from stocking up on food and water, our preparation had focused on plotting our destination on my GPS-friendly smartphone, setting expectations of what, for large stretches, only convenience and googlemaps could label a road, and listening to America's A Horse With No Name.
Of actual desert conditions, we weren’t what you’d call conversant. We had a few details. If rational behaviour had been our aim, we probably would have done better to be completely blank.
Somewhere down the line I’d come across the worst-case image of sandstorms that shrank the world to ten scratching metres. Accordingly, when we looked out the window that morning to see a Betadine-tinted courtyard where people ran with hands at their eyes, I thought, Great! I can see at least 50 metres!
We covered our faces with glasses and dustmasks, and tightened the hoods of our waterproof jackets. We were ready. This was neither knowledge or commonsense—more the crack that can exist between. We rolled our bikes to reception and checked out. Call it what you will. Sometimes knowing a little makes you stupider than knowing nothing at all.
We thought outside would be okay just because it could be worse. We stepped into a rebuke.
Sand whipped between buildings on a southerly so strong it dislodged noise-cancelling headphones and forced us to alternate between pushing our bikes through sand drifts and riding north at walking pace. Our eyes grew gritty and we had to resort to hand signals.
We were loving it. Any concerned Mongolians were politely dismissed.
Why worry? It could be worse.
It did get worse.
The neglected buildings, gers and leaning wooden fences of Zamyn Uud weren’t much to look at, but they had slowed the wind. Only a few hundred metres north, where the lone sealed road sputtered into packed gravel, there was nothing to slow the sandstorm as it bounded over hundreds of kilometres of empty desert.
Drifts of sand formed at our feet in an instant, sliding and clumping against the wheels of silent convoys. Their drivers were back in town, where every passing motorist stopped to tell us we should be, but this Old Testament flexing was too good to miss.
If the road was a kaleidoscope than above was outright surreal: sand seemed to change state, bucking tendrils dissolving and reforming riding the helix of spectral currents in spirals and twists and solidity-scattering flicks.
And it struck, sounding like one long raspy exhale, strong enough that particles stabbed through three layers of clothing and waterproof gloves like hundreds of static-shock discharges; strong enough that, gusting slightly from the side, it could force us across across tyre troughs and off the road completely.
It was a jarring, hostile beauty, but In 90 minutes we’d only covered several kilometers. We started to consider our options. Logistically, it didn’t make sense to camp so close to where we’d set off.
It hit us. Even through three layers of clothes and padded waterproof gloves I could feel particles of sand like the sharp stabs of hundreds of static shocks discharging.
30 minutes after two hard-faced Mongol guys in a packed 4WD stopped us and phoned an English-speaking sister for back-and-forth communication, they returned--sister and child in tow--in a vehicle emptied for us. We formed a circle in the rear, seeking shelter like a tribal council in earlier century, and talked through the prospect of buying a lift to Sainshand, for a deferred ride to the next town. We settled on the hope that the weather would lift by tomorrow.
They returned us to Zamyn Uud, where we dragged our sand-blasted bikes into another hotel, cleared ourselves of sand and cut shirts into wholeface masks.
We might have turned back, but not before we’d glimpsed an unforgettable world. A full-fledged sandstorm from a bike.
I was still picking sand from my eye when I got ready to sleep that night. Smiling too. I was glad we hadn’t thought our way to safe-eyed luxury. I was glad that, when I woke that morning, I hadn’t known more or stopped to think.
We could have done more to know more.
We had made it to dusty Zamyn Uud after a sleeper train from Beijing, passing the spaced-out mudbrick houses of Inner Mongolia before being stamped through the border town of Erlian and into the real Mongolia.
Apart from stocking up on food and water, our preparation had focused on plotting our destination on my GPS-friendly smartphone, setting expectations of what, for large stretches, only convenience and googlemaps could label a road, and listening to America's A Horse With No Name.
Of actual desert conditions, we weren’t what you’d call conversant. We had a few details. If rational behaviour had been our aim, we probably would have done better to be completely blank.
Somewhere down the line I’d come across the worst-case image of sandstorms that shrank the world to ten scratching metres. Accordingly, when we looked out the window that morning to see a Betadine-tinted courtyard where people ran with hands at their eyes, I thought, Great! I can see at least 50 metres!
We covered our faces with glasses and dustmasks, and tightened the hoods of our waterproof jackets. We were ready. This was neither knowledge or commonsense—more the crack that can exist between. We rolled our bikes to reception and checked out. Call it what you will. Sometimes knowing a little makes you stupider than knowing nothing at all.
We thought outside would be okay just because it could be worse. We stepped into a rebuke.
Sand whipped between buildings on a southerly so strong it dislodged noise-cancelling headphones and forced us to alternate between pushing our bikes through sand drifts and riding north at walking pace. Our eyes grew gritty and we had to resort to hand signals.
We were loving it. Any concerned Mongolians were politely dismissed.
Why worry? It could be worse.
It did get worse.
The neglected buildings, gers and leaning wooden fences of Zamyn Uud weren’t much to look at, but they had slowed the wind. Only a few hundred metres north, where the lone sealed road sputtered into packed gravel, there was nothing to slow the sandstorm as it bounded over hundreds of kilometres of empty desert.
Drifts of sand formed at our feet in an instant, sliding and clumping against the wheels of silent convoys. Their drivers were back in town, where every passing motorist stopped to tell us we should be, but this Old Testament flexing was too good to miss.
If the road was a kaleidoscope than above was outright surreal: sand seemed to change state, bucking tendrils dissolving and reforming riding the helix of spectral currents in spirals and twists and solidity-scattering flicks.
And it struck, sounding like one long raspy exhale, strong enough that particles stabbed through three layers of clothing and waterproof gloves like hundreds of static-shock discharges; strong enough that, gusting slightly from the side, it could force us across across tyre troughs and off the road completely.
It was a jarring, hostile beauty, but In 90 minutes we’d only covered several kilometers. We started to consider our options. Logistically, it didn’t make sense to camp so close to where we’d set off.
It hit us. Even through three layers of clothes and padded waterproof gloves I could feel particles of sand like the sharp stabs of hundreds of static shocks discharging.
30 minutes after two hard-faced Mongol guys in a packed 4WD stopped us and phoned an English-speaking sister for back-and-forth communication, they returned--sister and child in tow--in a vehicle emptied for us. We formed a circle in the rear, seeking shelter like a tribal council in earlier century, and talked through the prospect of buying a lift to Sainshand, for a deferred ride to the next town. We settled on the hope that the weather would lift by tomorrow.
They returned us to Zamyn Uud, where we dragged our sand-blasted bikes into another hotel, cleared ourselves of sand and cut shirts into wholeface masks.
We might have turned back, but not before we’d glimpsed an unforgettable world. A full-fledged sandstorm from a bike.
I was still picking sand from my eye when I got ready to sleep that night. Smiling too. I was glad we hadn’t thought our way to safe-eyed luxury. I was glad that, when I woke that morning, I hadn’t known more or stopped to think.
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