The Mongol Rally:
Within Sight of Mongolia
Welcome to Russia
After the hulking great communist era sign proclaiming our entrance into Russia, our first few hours in the country were much the same as our last few in Kazakhstan. Flat, lightly farmed, occasional patches of forest. Not terribly interesting. The only significant change was the improvement in the road surface, pristine asphalt all the way to Barnaul.
Welcome to Russia
Mongolia is closed on Sundays
Barnaul is a relatively prosperous, if inconsequential, city in Southern Siberia and is the capital of the Altai Territory. There isn’t much to hold your attention, and we hadn’t envisaged staying more than one night here on our way through Russia to Mongolia (China, the other option, is a bureaucratic nightmare). However, in highly efficient Mongolian style, the western border with Russia is not open on Sundays. Finding out, as we did, en route, we decided to kill our spare day in the city, use some wifi, and relax a little before the last leg to the finish line.
One of Barnaul’s old trams
The Chuysky Trakt is one of Russia’s most beautiful roads
As Sunday dawned, we packed our belongings and headed south early. We wanted to get as close to the border as possible for the Monday morning opening. After a few hours of driving through the same flat landscape we experienced on entering Russia, the land began to crumple and crease, gradually rising up to the 4000m peaks of the Chuya range. This part of the road is known as the Chuysky Trakt and is reputedly one of the world’s great drives.
Driving Russia’s Chuysky Trakt
After our time on the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan, it would take some pretty epic mountain scenery to impress us. While the Chuysky Trakt couldn’t compete on the same level, there was no denying its beauty. Turquoise mountain rivers meandering through pine forests, serpentine mountain passes, cascading waterfalls, and occasional wooden villages of traditional Altai round-houses, all with the snow-capped Chuyas in the distance to top it off.
A stop on the Chuysky Trakt overlooking the turquoise Katun River
Wild-camping on the Chuysky Trakt
As we camped alongside the Chuya River, watching the cows being herded home and the sun setting behind the valley walls, the rural idyll was interrupted by a strange sight. Another zebra was in town. Team Meat and 3 Veg joined us in their car ‘Debra the Zebra’ for a chilly night of brandy around the campfire before an early drive to the border the following morning.
The zebras queueing for Mongolia at the end of the Chuysky Trakt
This Leg
Days: 3
Countries: 1
Distance: 617 miles
Time in car: 17 hours 30 minutes
Total
Days: 44
Countries: 24
Distance: 9,150 miles
Time in car: 11 days 3 hours 30 minutes