Mongolia - Stuck in the desert sand at Bayandalai

Once we left the Yolin-Am junction, we were back on good paved road, driving 40km west to  Bayandalai

VIPs crossing.....

Slowed down for a couple of camels too...

28km more to go.....Bayandalai Village...

At 5.30pm, we reached Bayandalai. 

Mongolian must have bionic eyes... the wordings on the road signs in Mongolia are really small and hard to read. You almost always have to stop or slow down, to properly read it. 

Our plan was to go to Sevrei Town then onward to see the Khongorin Els (Khongor Sand Dunes).
We found Sevrei is not really on the tourist map, the town was lethargic, void of tourists. Sevrei was at it hottest with very low humidity.

For now, we had a look around the village.

The red building is the bank.

This village was a little different from the ones we have seen so far... There were a lot of soft sand accumulated at the side of fences and building... 

We stopped at a supermarket and got a coke and some cookies. We got some beef rib stew and some buuz. We waited half an hour to get our take away.

We left Bayandalai at about 7.30pm. We had thought that the paved road goes all the way to Sevrei and we would have enough time to reach Sevrei before it gets dark. How wrong we were...

A few hundred metres ahead the paved road abruptly ended. The track ahead looks very sandy, with the GPS guiding us we pressed on.

 The track have been covered by the shifting sand blown by the constant wind. This is our first time driving on a sandy track in Mongolia. Up to this point, the track we were on were pretty solid and we were used to creating our own track to get a less bumpy ride. Dad tried to change "lanes" on this sandy track and in doing so got our Sorento stuck in the sand. Dad tried to get out jerking but the wheels dug deeper into the soft desert sand.

In my panic state, I had forgotten to take a photo. We got out of our Sorento to have a look - the back wheel on the passenger side were submerged in sand. The front wheels were not too bad. We decided that the best way was to dig the sand that was choking the wheels and we then place the two pieces of wood that we brought along, one on the front of each of the back tyres. Dad then tried again whilst mum and I push from the back. Thank God we managed to get free. 

We drove for 10 minutes, we were not going fast but the engine roared a little.. rpm was high.Its getting dark, about 8.40pm..

We were losing daylight and soon we will not be able to see where we are headed. We did not know how far the sandy track goes on for. Our next destination was the Khongorin Els. We had planned to go there via Sevrei. Should we back track to Bayandalai and find an alternative road to get to Khongorin Els instead? The paper map we had showed another dirt track from Bulgan (near the Flaming Cliffs) to Khongorin Els.. should we take this route? We are not sure.. One thing we know was, Dad does not like to backtrack and repeat roads that we have traveled on..  

The internet connection here was very weak and we could not access Google Earth. 

So, we decided to just sleep right there in the middle of the Desert, not wanting to risk another sand trap. We had our Buuz dinner (the beef ribs weren't to our liking.. it was just boiled in water with some salt) and made some instant noodles. None of us was in the mood of eating much. 

Not too long after turning in, we saw the lights from another car in the distance and it looked like it was heading towards us.. We were all up, looking tensely to see what would happen next. We hoped the guy could see our Sorento in the middle of the track and avoid us. He did, phew.... and so did a few other cars and vans later on. They were driving quite fast.. A couple of them got stuck right in the sand like us and had to dig themselves out. Feeling a little safe now that we know the other drivers can see us, we slept soundly.

The next morning, we woke up and saw that we had company after all.. Another van had its wheels buried in the sand. The driver was waiting for us to wake up and approached us and asked to use our Sorento to help pull him out of the sand. Dad went over to have a look. His van was full with heavy containers carrying fuel.. Dad asked him to unload the fuel container to make it easier to pull.. but he refused. Our Sorento was already labouring yesterday carrying the weight of all our own stuff and full fuel tank on this sandy track. We could not possibly get her to pull his van and all that fuel as well... We just could not risk any damage to our Sorento. He will just have to wait for another car to come by.

On the left is the track of the car that avoided us last night. 

On the right are a couple more tracks.

Dad decided not to back track. We will carry on on the sandy track to Sevrei. 

Before we left we released some of the air from all four tyres to make it easier to drive on the sand.

 We later find out that this route is not the typical route used by the tourist groups. That would explain why we did not come across any tourist vans the whole time.

Check out our next post for the drive to Sevrei and onwards to Khongorin Els.