Woke up this morning to views across the mountains that looked very different in the early light.
The route between Onguday and Aktash is amazing. Fantastic scenery, good roads and the weather has been great. Here are some images on the way.
Bee hives and honey house. Sorry Sally could not ask them about bee diseases (language barrier!)
Every so often the road climbed up to a pass. Mostly the road just winds along beside the river and so there are not many big climbs.
Lots of places in Russia have ramps where you can repair your car. The villages often have shared ones for use by the community. In these remote places everyone seems to work on their own vehicle, and often have a spare one outside their gate. Even more Ladas in these villages.
Having a 4×4 would not be essential for the route that we have taken so far, however we would not have been able to access some of the best riverside spots or the camping spots above the towns. A good strong vehicle is also useful for some of the potholed roads we have been on.
We have started to see more houses that look like permanent gers. Some of them look very tempting to stay in, but we are very comfortable in Troopy and have slept in it every night except three since leaving home. Two of those in Pskov (Olga’s friends flat) and one night in a hotel, where we thought we had arranged camping in the car park!
Every corner brings another fantastic view.
Everybody is busy bringing back their winter feed. We have seen some lorries with twice as much as this one, but have never managed to take a picture.
Further along the road we saw a massive fire in the mountains. Should be a good sunset!
Just before we got to Aktash, we saw our first glimpse of a snow capped peak. I think that we drive very close to it on the way to Tashanta.
Now we need to find a spot for the night.
We drove into Aktash and bought fuel, but decided to backtrack slightly to the village before where we had seen a spot by a stream. It seemed fine and the people who stopped by were friendly and so we decided to stay.
We will move about 60km closer to the Mongolian border tomorrow.
troopytracks 