Private Transport in Mongolia

So you don’t want to be packed in like a sardine on a public bus, with a vomiting local child on one knee and a drunk old man’s head on the other?  Charter yourself a private vehicle and travel in style (Mongolian style, that is).

But you’ll want to know about a few things first.

The “Roads”

Mongolia doesn’t really have roads, per se.  There are a few stretches of pavement here and there (which the drivers seem to avoid whenever possible), but all those nice lines drawn on the map are merely suggestions, places where a driver before you has pushed down some grass under his tires.  Even if you (or, in reality your driver)  does choose to follow that route, it won’t be along the same tracks.  Once a path has been driven on two or three times it is apparently no good anymore, and a driver will drive one car width to the left or right, resulting in empty 12 lane highways stretching through each valley.

One of the more well-defined roads in Central Mongolia. Don’t worry, you won’t stay in the tracks for long.

Periodically, the track you are in will be deemed no good anymore, and the driver will make a 45 degree turn, bouncing across the ruts until he finds one he likes better.  The effect is uncannily like riding a speedboat across waves (ahhh, memories of Micronesia…)

Prepare for Engagement!

Mongolia is, above all else, a land of animals.  Great mixed herds of sheep, goats, horses, yaks, and camels are nearly everywhere.  Especially stretched across these “roads” (evidently the dripping fluids from the old beat up vans season the grass, making it extra tasty.)  As the van doesn’t have a horn, slipping into neutral and revving the engine is our best way of motivating them — or perhaps challenging them to a race across the steppe.  Either way, it’s not very effective.  The result is a video game halfway between Frogger and Asteroids mixed with a game of chicken, where your vehicle darts and weaves through the shifting mass of animals with varying degrees of assertiveness depending on the size of each animal and its intrinsic propensity for motion.  As with squirrels, the key is in predicting which way the animal will leap; unlike with squirrels, there’s a real consequence to guessing wrong with a yak.

The road through the lava field

The best bits of road are the ones crossing the lava fields.  These are from old eruptions, so soil (read: centuries of cow patties) have filled in the fields, leaving a landscape of sharp protruding rocks, with none more than a car width apart.  The rutted dirt tracks are bumpy; these are just cruel.

Mongolians love to make parking lots, even in the most remote spots with no roads leading there, and despite the fact that there are no rules restricting where you can drive.

The books warn you of the bouncy rides, and you think, hey there are bad roads all over the world.   But Mongolia specializes in exploring each of the possible mechanisms of motion induced unpleasantness.  Viz:

• Rattling your fillings out (think severe washboard)
• Rearranging your internal organs (this is like Kenya)
• Seasickness (endless rolling side to side)
• Smashing into the windows and door frames (from sudden swerves dodging unseen apparitions)
• NOW you know why the ceiling is padded (for obstacles even the driver didn’t see coming)

Padded ceilings don’t help eggs.

Outside of the Gobi, river crossings are a constant.  Bridges are ephemeral – the one you crossed yesterday may be a new set of rapids in the river tomorrow.  Drivers seem to choose at random whether to floor it and hope for the best, or to drive back and forth along the bank searching for the perfect spot to floor it and hope for the best.  The water is often up past the wheels.  Many cars have a snorkel; those that don’t have an audience that materializes out of the steppe to watch from the banks.  The best technique we saw was to cut the top off of a 1-liter soda bottle, open the hood and use the bottom of the bottle to cover the air intake for the engine.

Soda bottle snorkel technology

The Van

The view from beside the one opening window

The van of choice is the Soviet UAZ, locally known as a Porgon (though spelled in Cyrillic with an F (phi) – but never try reading Mongolian Cyrillic out loud).  The front has two seats, with the engine in between.  The back consists of two benches facing each other (one facing forwards, one backwards, to maximize motion sickness) with one set of legroom between them – guaranteed to encourage sibling conviviality. (Aaron spent most of the time kneeling on the backward seat, watching TV over the driver’s shoulder.)

The van has springs – very soft springs – but evidently no shocks.  The van has no horn.  The van has almost one window in the passenger area.  The van does have a starter.  Actually, it has at least 3, two of which are in beat up boxes under the seats.  It starts on the first try, every time.  (All those other key turns, clicks, profanities, and push starts are just for practice).  [Eleven of our twelve flights from home to Tokyo showed the Lego movie; for those of you who have seen it, “First Try!” became our running joke.]

Broken down, sorting through the screws and springs

The van also breaks down regularly, and often inexplicably (or maybe just when the driver is thirsty).  When this happens, the driver tilts his seat forward, unfolds a rag, and dumps out a big can of screws, bolts and springs.  He sifts through these for half an hour or so, then puts them all back in the can, puts his seat back, gets in, and starts the engine (on the first try, naturally).  If it’s really bad, he takes out a pair of needle nose pliers and bends something back and forth a few times.  He once produced the remnants of a circuit card as evidence.  I don’t know where a circuit card fits into a 1964 Soviet van, and I don’t know how it started for the next 3 days without it, but after those 3 days we stopped in the middle of the road at the sight of a nearly identical van passing the other way who handed over a new (or at least visually intact) circuit card before continuing on.  After that, there was no change whatsoever in the ease of starting the van.

Ethan enjoying the extra heat from the engine with the lid open. The thermometer above shows the outside temp at 39.1c (102f). It topped out that day at 44c (111), and was 20c (68f) in the morning.

The other feature of these vans is their propensity for overheating.  Naturally, this makes it the ideal choice for a trip into the Gobi.  The solution is to stop the van and open the hood.  Recall that the hood is between the driver and front passenger seats, meaning that the open engine compartment vents all of its excess heat right into the vehicle – the vehicle with one window that sort of opens.  But not to worry, this only happens on the hottest days.

Shockingly, the most popular vehicle in the country (though not for tourists) is the Toyota Prius.  Japan seems to dump used Priuses here for some reason, making them the cheapest car around.  Here we are, being pureed in the back of a bouncing Russian hard-core off road van, and every corner of the countryside is awash in Priuses, crawling across the same lava fields, fording the same rivers, and sliding through the same muddy ruts we are.

The Driver

Professional Mongolian drivers are easily identified by the beach ball they keep under the front of their shirts.  (Meals are part of the standard driver’s wages, and their exercise regimen consists of pressing the gas and brake pedals.)  This physique is emphasized by the choice of fashion: pulling your tee shirt up over your belly and under your arms, holding it in place with your, um, pectoral muscles.

Mongolian driver fashion on display during a periodic stop to ask for directions

Driving here follows its own special rules.  Much like a dog sitting down, the driver has to drive in three tight circles before coming to a stop.  And unlike you might expect, a professional driver does not slow down to stop.  Instead, he slows down, drives several seconds at 2 or 3 miles an hour, then floors the gas pedal, and as soon as the van lurches forward, he slams on the brake.  (An alternative method is acceptable, which involves alternating driving in forward and reverse before the final gas-brake maneuver.)

Starting is also with a lurch.  Despite the fact that the typical driving speed is around 25 miles an hour, and no one ever seems to be in any hurry, the moment the last passenger lifts his back food off the ground to step into the vehicle, the driver floors the gas, sending you flying into everyone else’s lap, while they in turn cling to whatever’s around to keep both it and them from falling out, while simultaneously straining to get the door closed as the vehicle rocks side to side across the ruts.  When the door finally does close, you are invariably congratulated by the driver turning backward to yell at you in Mongolian for slamming it too hard.

Music is a key part of driving.  You must have a music player with at least a hundred songs, so that you can keep skipping 97 of them to repeat the same three continuously for 15 days.  If you can’t play the recorded music, you must sing the songs – but only the chorus.  If you are not singing, you must be whistling the hook continuously.

The only exception is when talking on the phones.  Mongolia has 4 cell providers, and calls within the network are cheaper than calls between networks.  The obvious solution: carry 4 phones.  Each time you crest a hill and another tower comes into sight, all the phones come out.  This might not be sufficient to distract you from the road while driving, so in addition to the 4 phones there is a television covering the rear view mirror.  The television is used to play the music videos for the 3 songs.  Typically, two of the devices are in use simultaneously.

The songs themselves are Mongolian folk-pop.  Essentially, they are the equivalent of American country music, romanticizing the simple country life, with the same conservative political overtones.  (The most popular singer was just elected to Parliament).  The songs are all basically about horses running around on the steppe.  As a result, the videos on the TV covering the rear view mirror look exactly like the view out the front window of the van.  Since there aren’t any actual roads anyway, watching TV while driving (and texting and talking simultaneously) is of no real consequence.

The scary part comes when you turn on to one of the few paved roads…