The 60km into Olgii today was slow as the road was rough (again) with many different tracks to choose from and lots of road work (a new road is being built but so far it is not ready for use). About 10 km out from the town we came upon a large group of vehicles and people walking and riding horses, some of the horses where covered in bright rugs and some of the children were dressed as jockies, we could only guess that it was some kind of informal race.

The road descends for 5 km as it enters the town and from this vantage point we got a good view of the town, its environs and the Khovd river. The town was bigger than we had expected. The LonelyPlanet gives the population at around 23,000 but it looked bigger than that to us. Also we were surprised by the size of the Khovd river.

Believe it or not we had some navigational issues actually finding our way into the town but eventually we made it onto the paved main street. Immediately we came across a German couple traveling in a Unimog camper and chatted for a while, then it was off to find a supermarket and resupply.

The supermarket exercise was very unsatisfactory. We found 3 of them in the town but we were unabe to get cheese or meat at any of them; but by now we know that is just par for the course.

This morning, at a photograph stop, I noticed some fluid on the trucks frame rail near a connection in the front left brake line. So spent some time opening up the engine bay and looking for any leak. Did not find a leak but did find a brake line that looked like it was chaffing and so spent some time wrapping the suspect line with a piece of water hose to protect it.


After some looking we found the Travelers Guesthouse, a compound with 4 gers, a house and a few out buildings and (just) enough space for our vehicle. The place has wifi, reasonable showers, pit toilets and the lady that runs the place is helpful and speaks good English and will do the laundry for a price.


We stayed/will stay at the place for a few days, catch our breath and prepare for the next phase of the journey which is back into Russia in about 130 km.