Learning from experience and gleaning tips from Maddy when I need them, I am now an ardent convert to the route book. It has become my bible, and though I haven’t donned robes, I am its slavish devotee. I ferry it lovingly to our tent each evening, pore over its pages with rapt interest, mark important landmarks with pink and blue highlighters, and then zip it into its very own red plastic P2P-embossed case when I go to sleep. I understand the book’s directional symbols without having to think about it. My eyes instinctively swivel from the route book up to the Tripmeter and back to the page’s mileage a hundred times a day, double and triple checking that we are where I think we are.
The route book can’t always save me, though. It hasn’t taken me long to learn that, when it comes to roads, nature is more capricious than any village council budget. Each morning we get pages of revisions to review. The further into Mongolia we go the more copious the changes. Sand covers a previously obvious road, floods wash out a bridge, someone’s ruts create a new track in the wrong direction, a river is too high to ford, the deep winter snows have eradicated a track altogether. All of this needs to be explained, and an alternate route provided. With all the other navigators, I line up early to get the change pages then annotate my route book so I’ll know when the original instructions are no longer valid as well as when to resume following them.
None of this would matter if we didn’t have so far to go. Somehow, in my in-depth reading of the pre-Rally advisories, I had failed to notice that the 35 mph average speed was the proverbial brass ring, something to aspire to but rarely achieve. After less than a week on the road, I have to throw my expectation of seven-hour days out the window, where it can bite the dust alongside my fantasy of eating tasty local cuisine at a charming cafe each day. We’re doing ten plus hours of driving a day. That’s without even stopping for anything other than fuel, as the only place to get gas is from fuel trucks parked near the outskirts of camp each evening. In a city as modest as Ulaanbaatar, the day ends with a further hour of bumper-to-bumper traffic. I’m already continuously tired. Having thousands of miles more to go is so daunting I can’t begin to imagine how I’m going to make it.
Also in the category of mistaken assumptions is that I know absolutely there are areas of tremendous natural beauty in Mongolia. Somewhere. What I know haunts me. Those photos I looked at with the Mongolian naturalists are still branded in my mind’s eye. I want to feel the cool shade of those deep forests, hear the babbling roll of rushing rivers, and feast my eyes on the rainbow colors of alpine wildflowers.
Our part of Mongolia is desert, plain and simple. True, it’s desert in which things do survive, but whatever decides to grow here has its work cut out for it. The land we are traversing is too harsh to support even a modest hamlet. There’s so little of anything but desert in this desert, that when we do see something other than low brown hills it’s cause for great wonder.
Once, or if we’re lucky, twice a day, we pass a solitary yurt, with a scrappy yard fenced with sticks. The herds are out and the house dog naps in the dirt. A bit of clothing flaps listlessly on a line in the scant breeze. We don’t see people around the yurt, and I figure they’re with their animals. Grazing must be very far away indeed as there’s little edible growing on the packed coarse ground we’re covering. All of this is as it has been for centuries, except for two novelties: a satellite dish fastened to a pole near the yurt door and two small solar panels rigged to provide electricity.
My favorite times are when we see Bactrian camels glide by in search of fresh grazing. The animals I’ve been calling camels all my life, those tall desert animals with the single hump that show up in Lawrence of Arabia? They’re not camels. They’re dromedaries. These double-humped animals outside my window are the real camels, and while there might be fewer of them now than a hundred years ago, they, at least, have no motorized equivalent. It’s coming off of winter, and they’re shedding. Great heavy patches of brown winter coat hang loose, revealing the smooth summer coat underneath, leaving them looking mangy and ill-kempt. They walk slowly and gracefully, lumpy philosophers deep in thought, covering vast distances to their summer grazing grounds, at home in these barren parts as I’ll never be. Like a whisper they appear on the crest of a sand hill, and like a sigh they’re gone.
Each morning, I parcel out our snack rations of beef jerky, gorp, and cookies, as if we were marooned on a desert island. Given our lack of interaction with the local populace, we might as well be. The jerky was a lastminute inspiration when I was scrounging around for something snacklike to pack in Roxanne’s trunk that wouldn’t melt, wouldn’t get stale, and yet would be appetizing to eat. I thank goodness for it every day, as it’s often the only bit of protein that passes my lips. The gorp I made myself, picking out every ingredient that I imagined I’d like to taste in the middle of a desert. It abounds with hazel nuts, almonds, salted pepitas, dried sour cherries and cranberries, sweet golden raisins, and bittersweet chocolate chips. The chocolate chips both amaze and disturb me, as despite the heat, they never change shape. Whenever I offer some to Bernard I can’t resist referencing other bizarre candy behavior, saying in a chirpy voice: “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands!”
A big part of what pulled me through the awful months of car rebuilding were my dreams of whom I’d meet and what I’d see in China and Mongolia. For now, I have to be satisfied with my limited interaction with the Mongolian camp staff and random village mechanics. Technically, of course, they are locals, but these aren’t the random encounters that bring a trip alive. Aside from the crowds that surround Roxanne when we stop, I haven’t talked to anyone who lives here. I turn to Maddy and Sybil for support, but they don’t seem to mind as much as I do, and they don’t understand why I do mind. We’re here to drive, they say. It’s a rally and that’s the nature of the beast. When it comes to fighting reality, it appears I’m on my own.
As we’re driving, I argue with myself instead. Doesn’t driving by its very nature imply stopping? If so, how come we’re not doing any of the latter? Already I’m starting to long for a more balanced approach to this drive, and with that comes the knowledge that, for the next thirty days, I’m not going to get it. My resilience never made it back to normal before we left for Beijing, and now it threatens to desert me, making small slights feel like major dramas and inflating minor problems into major fiascos.
Bernard’s no help. From the get-go he’s understood the idea of a rally. I assumed I understood it and neglected to ask him how he saw things unfolding. Now I see I was so far wrong that I can’t even begin to explain to Bernard my disappointment. I have to find a way to come to grips with the Rally reality by myself. As for Bernard, he’s focused on getting Roxanne, and by extension us, to Paris, and that takes all his time.