Mongolia is incredibly vast and sparsely populated. Its climate during the wet season is unpredictable, with lots of rain one second and sunny heat the next. Its soil composition is mostly clay, silt or sand. Its road network consists mainly of trails laid out by vehicles that happen to go there. Sub-base, shoulders, pavement, drainage and such commodities are unheard of outside of the main towns.
And so, when a 16 ton truck try to tame the Mongolian steppes after a night of heavy rainstorm, it will get stuck. And stuck Archie got.
These were also the days when my stomach decided to turn on me. Whatever the cause, be it food poisoning, bacteria or just plain bad luck, I spent a couple of days helplessly watching some of the other travellers helping out digging out the half-sunken truck or scooping away the muddy waters, my mind eager but my body unable to pitch in properly. Considering these were long driving days with no particular sights or hikes or activities, other than rescuing sunken trucks, I did however not miss out on anything overly important due to illness.
The weather gods were grumpy and all irrational-like, which was a good way of training us overlanders the proper way to make camp, raise tents and cook food in as diverse conditions as storms, sandstorms, rainstorms, thunderstorms and the occasional nonstorm, making us all stronger for the experience.
However, after many days of driving in speeds more of the Driving Miss Daisy variety than Fast and Furious 5, and almost as many nights bushcamping in the outskirts of nowhere, with one night at a nice and shower-providing ger camp in between, we had cruised half the height of Mongolia into the very beginning of the Gobi desert, and as the sand dunes rose far in the distance, marking another waypoint of this muddy march. Or, you know, wayridge.
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