The events of last night that haunted the Ger this morning can be pieced together from various peoples fragmented memory of it: Hermann, Hermann The Ger-man, had collected more beer and vodka for us. He asked if we would like more then told us he would go to the store to buy it for us because it is cheaper for locals, for some reason no one thought this was at all strange or complete and utter bollocks. Hermann had told us the price per bottle and had duly collected exactly the total amount, which of course was greatly inflated to account for gullible tourist tax. After he returned from the store he told us we couldn't stay in the Ger because that's where his parents slept, so we set up camp on the floor of his hut instead. Then we sat around the table and drank most of the beverages he had retrieved from the store. At first it was calm and quiet. Adam and Matt had a drinking contest in Europe, and it seemed last night was the ideal time for a rematch. They started on beer and then turned to shots of Chingis Gold Vodka, the moment they started that is the moment things started to go bad. I was sat in the car trying to catch up on writing these blogs when Hermann opened the drivers door and joined me. He didn't speak much English so I doubted his ability to write about what we had done in Kyrgyzstan, I  put down my phone and showed him some of the things in the car instead. He didn't seem too interested and prefered to look around himself, until I got out the pen knife which he quickly asked if he could keep. I told him where he could go and put it back in the pocket it lived - I haven't seen that pen knife since, Hermann "The Bastard" Ger-man. I made sure I firmly locked the car once we both got out. Matt was outside at this point and was eyeing up Hermann's motorbike, he donated some petrol and took a backseat joy-ride around the farm. Adam was inside busy cheating his way through their drinking contest, sneaking vodka into Matt's beer and faking his shots. The horse was next on Matt's "To Ride" list as he came barreling back out the door. Hermann was resistant at first but quickly came around once he caught a whiff of a  $10 persuasion. I don't know what Matt was expecting to happen when he climbed on and shoved his gopro in the horses face, but it didn't look like he was expecting all the bucking since he was being flung all over the Ger's front garden. Inside the hut I watched as Adam escaped into the outside world past an old woman, Hermann's mother, trying to steal Jamie's glasses which he needs if he wants to see. I followed Adam outside but got distracted when I saw Chris clutching our boot as it fell off the car. Matt was trying to help Chris in his inebriated state but quickly rushed off to give medical assistance to his fallen competitor, he is after all a medical student. I found a bolt to replace the broken pin and taped up the boot. Meanwhile Adam was busy loosing the contest by throwing up his liver. Matt had won but he wasn't the winner as he quickly joined Adam. The drunken pair caused chaos amongst themselves outside, culminating in Matt tossing his gopro in the sh#t filled pit after Adam gave him a helpful nudge, a nudge with both feet off the ground. I watched as the rest of Hermann's family, the Ger-mans, walked around the cars trying doors before going to sleep in their house.

 

In the cold light of morning we started packing up our sleeping bags while Matt and Adam packed up their shame. Hermann came over to tell me how much a hotel was in the city, which was a good hint that what I thought might happen was going to happen. For some reason everyone was surprised when he started walking around the cars asking for money. He wanted $20 per person, all 12 of us, including the people who slept in the cars. Needless to say no one wanted to pay the con-man they thought was a friendly local. We tried to explain that we wouldn't have come if he had explained there would be a cost involved, but Hermann the Ger-man just kept shouting "money!" at us. Being demanding wasn't going to get Hermann anywhere with a collection of stubborn ralliers. We went down the "we don't have any money" route, the lion boys tried to give him some African money they had. The rest of the Ger-mans came out and joined in with the shouting and demanding, and were met with the same response. Eventually Hermann said he was going to get the police, so we called his bluff and said for him to go. Obviously having local Mongolian police there would have only made things worse , but they didn't need to know we knew that. Hermann's wife and/or sister was becoming increasingly annoyed and violent as Hermann climbed on his motorbike. His parents clearly didn't want the police involved and tore him off his bike. Eventually our stubbornness wore the Ger-mans to accepting $5 from the people who slept inside their house and a free football. Needless to say the Ger-mans weren't the same happy smiling waving people who had beckoned us into their Ger, when we drove off this morning.

 

If the events of this morning soured our taste for Mongolia, the brand new tarmac soured it more. We drove all morning without seeing a pothole or a single dirt track. Around lunch time we started passing a large lake and decided to stop for something to eat and a swim, the only problem was the lack of tracks between it and us. Eventually we found one track that went all the way to the lake, and someone's house. Lucky the family inside didn't want to steal anything from us, they just wanted to say ho then left us to have lunch. Our stove had completely stopped working in Russia so we were stuck cooking pasta with our terrible solid-fuel back-up, somehow we managed to finish cooking before the Mongoliers - a second victory in the Mongolian Heptathlon. After eating, some people went for a swim to wash off their shame. Once we finished lunch and got on the road again, it suddenly stopped and turned into a dirt track. We followed the track into the hills, and the lion boys sped off over the  horizon. We found them parked on the roadside next to a man with an eagle, who would apparently let you hold it for $2,  obviously he had our attention. Jamie held it for a few minutes before it tried to take him back to its nest to feed its young. As it flapped Jamie shat himself while he held onto the rope tied to it's feet, until he finally realised it would be better to let it go. Miles wanted to take a photo with the eagle on one arm and the stuffed lion in the other, the eagle-man accepted because he didn't really care what happened as long as he got his $2. I've never seen an eagle look so confused and angry at the same time, come to think of it I've never seen an eagle confused at all, but this one definitely didn't know what to make of the situation it was in. While we watched the eagle another man showed up to try his luck with charging us for a ride on his horse, we had all seem what happened to Matt and politely declined. Eagle-man looked pleased and horse-man looked disappointed as we drove up the road.

 

We found another convoy of three teams a few hundred metres around the corner huddled around one of their cars. Obviously this was a job for Sharkey, so the remaining 19 of us all stood around suggesting potential problems. Not a single one of us got it right, but Sharkey managed to get it running long enough for our convoy to hightail it up the hill before it broke again. At the top of the hill there was a large plateau covered in rivers. Mongolia doesn't seen to believe in bridges so we were going to have to drive through them, one river at a time. While we were debating the best route through the river the other convoy arrived behind us, it would have been weird if they arrived in front of us. Either way they were there to follow us through the river.  As we had been on the Pamir highway and had crossed many streams we were prepared for a proper river. We eyed up our line and ploughed straight through all of the rivers, and found ourselves alive on the other side. Since the Mongoliers had brought a 4x4 it only seemed fair that they should have to take the crossing through the deepest sections. Unfortunately they managed to not succumb to a watery death. The "road" in between rivers was a horrendous series of huge rocks and large potholes but our 8 tiny cars slowly negotiated our way through the  mess. Unfortunately the new additions to the convoy couldn't keep pace with our original convoy so we slowly lost them from our rear-view mirrors. The road improved slightly to a sandy track, which meant we could pick up speed since we had places to be. The sandy track caused a problem we hadn't dealt with since the Pamirs, dust and lots of it. We could hardly see as the wind wasn't blowing the dust away, so wr latched onto the back of the car in front and followed their break lights through the blindness. Unfortunately the car we were following was the 4x4. Now I don't know if you know the difference between a Peugeot 107 and a 4x4; The 4x4 has a huge ride height while we do not, that means the 4x4 can straddle large rocks while we can not. We were following close behind as they chose their path without knowing what they were avoiding until it was too late. There was three deafening bangs as a series of rocks tried to punch their way through the bottom of the car. The car lost all power and we rolled to a stop on the side of the road. Sharkey decided the prime suspect was the fuel pump since it had been problematic before. While he tore apart the back of the car the other convoy arrived to gawk. Soon after they had arrived a Mongolian man stopped beside us. Clearly he didn't know anything about car mechanics and felt bad about it. Instead of helping with the car he silently gave us a watermelon and drove off, obviously we accepted and tucked into his apology melon. Once the melon was gone there was nothing keeping the other convoy around so they said they're good-byes and left us for dead in the Mongolian steppe. Somehow the Tajikistan cable tie and glue combo was still holding, but the base had fallen off which was easily screwed back on. 

 

With our car now functioning as it should we set back on the road and avoided following the 4x4 at all cost. The road was littered with huge puddles which the small cars slowly circled around. The Mongoliers didn't have such issues and drove straight through them. Clearly they had seen their chance for revenge from the watermelon incident and were driving in behind us. I could see then through the rear-view mirror splashing their way through the puddles but didn't think they would actually do what I could tell they were thinking of doing. As we slowly passed another puddle I saw them speed into it in my wing mirror, their car was cloaked by a huge brown wall of water. I didn't have time to close the window, I was too busy avoiding the rocks around the puddle, and I could see the wall of water approaching. Suddenly the wall of water wasn't in the wing mirror, it was inside the car. Somehow they had managed to aim a splash so well that every drop came pouring through the window. Next time we all pulled over I was still soaked, as was the inside of the car, so I took my instant revenge and emptied a bottle of water into their car. We had reached tarmac again outside a large town and were debating where to stay. The Australian boys, The Mongoliers and us were all keen to make use of a hotel while we could, while The Lion boys and The Morons (they chose their name not me)  wanted to camp. We're all mature adults so we agreed to go our separate ways for the evening and headed into town. The first hotel we found didn't have any rooms available and the second didn't even have a reception to check. The third hotel had three rooms and a reception desk so we checked in for the evening and went out for dinner. The second hotel we had tried was above a restaurant called "winners", we definitely fitted the bill and were all winners so we made a B-line there. The tv was showing a creepy Japanese reality show where they gave the contestants extreme amounts of plastic surgery, but it didn't put us off our delicious goulash. We had just finished eating when two guys from the other convoy walked in for dinner, they had found a karaoke bar in town and were there having a few drinks. Sharkey and Wanger accepted the offer to karaoke till the early hours of the morning, the rest of us were too tired from last night's chaos so went back to the hotel instead for a bed time story then an early night.