Despite the kayaking trip starting early morning The Lion Cubs had decided it was would be best to go back to the Karaoke bar again till the early hours of the morning. When I woke up at least half of them had figured out how to get back to the hotel. Miles was fast asleep in his bed and there was a human shaped lump in James' bed, it wasn't James but it was a bearded Australian. James had wondered in at 6 a.m. to catch a few minutes of sleep on the floor before we had to leave. I won't tell you where he was, that's a story best kept between him and his physiatrist. It turned out that Miles had told the bearded man he could come for the Kayaking excursion, to which Beardman had drunkenly agreed. Over breakfast it was clear he regretted his drunken decision, but he had come too far to back out.
The transportation arrived in the form of an old Russian van and we all climbed in. As we drove out of the city Miles, James and Beardman (aka Brenton) filled us in about their vodka fuelled evening in-between sleeping off their hangovers. When we stopped for petrol our guide asked if we would like to do something less active since we had a heavy night of partying last night. There was a long pause before he changed his question to what distance we would like to do. Obviously we would like to do the longest possible, so we said we would like to do the longest possible. He asked if we had all kayaked before and was immediately bombarded with bollocks. We all agreed we had kayaked before, then began increasing the level of experience. Soon Miles said he was an expert, Beardman told him about the extreme rapids he had tackled, I told him I was a kayaking instructor, then Jamie threw in that he had just won a gold at the commonwealth games. He nodded approvingly clearly impressed by the collection of kayaking gods he had in his van, then he told us there were sections of the river where it can be quite rough.
We drove on through the desert until it became huge grass covered in mountains, or is that the other way round, either way this is when we stopped to see Turtle Rock. Turtle Rock is a big rock which marginally looks like a turtle if viewed from a precise angle, the rest of the time it is just a rocky outcrop in a valley. The guide led us up the side of the rock and told us about the treasure which, according to local legend, is buried inside. At the neck of the turtle we ducked into a cave, and the guide told us to climb through a small hole in the ground. We obliged and willingly squeezed through onto a ledge which overlooked the park. The guide left us on the ledge to die without telling us what the next step was. We debated trying to climb down the shear drop off the side of the turtle's back, but decided the guide probably didn't want a mass suicide on his hands and went back the way we came.
As the van continued up river, with us all inside, I regretted my choice to sit on the bag of canoes in the back. The road disappeared and every bump would send me flying, compressing my spine in the process. We stopped at a section of river and begun unloading the kayaks. The guide informed us he would not be joining us because he "cannot swim, [he] can only drown". It seemed very irresponsible to send a group of tourists down a rapid filled river, but then I remembered we were experts so it wouldn't be an issue. The guide and driver began inflating the canoes - I'm such an expert that I don't really know the difference between a kayak and a canoe, but I think they might have been canoes - if you do know the difference picture us in a canoe anyway. The guide asked what pressure we would like them inflated too, so we gave him a precise PSI which was clearly derived from our collective background in advanced kayaking. As we set off from the shore I think it became very apparent we were lying as we all slowly drifted out of control in circles on a calm section of river.
The canoes were flat-bottomed, meaning they had no streamlined desire to go in any one direction, of course this was not helped by us trying to paddle. The kayaking trip was more of a floating trip, the river was too shallow to actually paddle so while the river was calm we floated carelessly downstream. The river was so shallow that the guides comments made no sense, "I can only drown", well yeah but he could just stand up instead of remaining face down in the two inches of water. Eventually the river began to deepen and flow faster. Mongolian rivers have taken a queue from the Mongolian roads and randomly split into multiple interweaving streams. At one intersection we involuntarily took a different track from the others. They had opted for the shallow smooth route, while we were dragged spinning randomly down the rapids until we reached the calmer waters before the others arrived. The calm gave us the opportunity to shout and wave, which of course meant they were looking our way when the boat suddenly tipped and we fell in. Luckily I caught my flip-flops as they tried to escape, and it was still shallow enough to walk the canoe to the shore and get back in.
The river continued with a turbulent flow until lunchtime, which was to be the dry packed-lunches on our canoe. Well they were originally quite dry until we came to the next section of rapids, where a tree helped the river to soak them. A large branch was poking out the water mid-rapids. I had spotted it and we tried to avoid it, "tried" being the main word, we paddled but the canoe had other plans and sent us heading sideways directly for it. We were pinned against the branch while the current forced one side of the canoe upwards and the other side underwater. I self-sacrificingly jumped in and swam back to shore dragging the canoe and Chris with me. At some point during this crash, probably the point at which the canoe was underwater, the lunches had become saturated. The others had successfully with the aid of blind luck, floated around the branch and were laughing as they came ashore. They were laughing right up until they saw the state of the lunches. The pasta in a Tupperware container was still edible but the loosely wrapped pastries were not. During the submersion the river had managed to steal my sunglasses and one flip-flop managed to escape. Over a very soggy lunch I saw my flip-flop float by on the river, mainly because Rob had thrown it in the river as I overheard him talking loudly to the others about doing. I was already soaked and I thought it would be funny so I dramatically dove in after the flip-flop and retrieved it, then I tossed it straight back in again - having only one flip-flop is about as useful as having zero flip-flops.
After everyone had finished complaining about lunch we got back on the river and followed whoever was leading into their poor choice. The river had split again, and for some reason Matt and James had chosen the tiny stream surrounded by bushes. As we floated down smashing into every bush along the way their canoe was littered with spiders. Unfortunately our canoe had gained a taste for the submarine lifestyle, so tried the same tactic as before and rotated perpendicularly to the flow wedging us between bushes on both banks. As the canoe began to tip I managed to lean hard enough on the other side that we didn't drown in a bush.
Once the river stopped arsing around it widened, deepened and became calm again. We relaxed in our spinning canoes for awhile, playing catch with an apple from lunch, until we got bored and tried to paddle on. Our paddling proved to make the spinning worse, we could hardly make it a few metres before the canoe spun. Over the rest of the day we tried various tactics for counteracting the spin, we tried both paddling at once, we tried paddling individually, we tried leaning, we tried in different positions but nothing would stop the spin. In between attempts we floated carelessly down the river admiring the landscape and shouting at horses on the shore. Once the others had well and truly left us to drown in the river we put in more effort to catch up, and solved the spinning problem. If Chris paddled at a "constant" rate and I sat in the back jamming my paddle in the water to steer we could travel in a reasonably direct path. For the last hour we managed to navigate through the calm sections and rapids without spinning a single time. Once we were back on firm land we dried off and packed up the canoes before driving to the large Genghis Khan statue.
The statue is a huge polished metal sculpture of Ghengis, that's right we're on a first name basis now, riding a horse holding his golden whip. Legend says he found his whip on this very hill, which is code for he bought it at Toys'R'Us on this very location. Inside the building at the base of the statue is a few museums and the world’s largest Mongolian riding boot which was unnecessarily huge. As I pointed out they only really needed to make it a size 12 and it would still have been the biggest in the world, they really didn't have to make a 20 metre tall version. The museums were an unimpressive collection of random pieces of metal, so we went to stand on the head of the statue horse. When James and I went to climb the stairs to the viewing platform, the guide approached us looking concerned. He warned us that it was a long and step climb with a deadly serious tone like he was comparing it to climbing Everest, so before we made the climb we went to the gift shop to pick up a Sherpa and pack-mule. Half way up we made basecamp to acclimatise to the altitude, but having been over the Pamirs we were confident in ourselves and pushed on to the summit. The final push lasted a few minutes of an average walk up a staircase, and then we were free to bask in thin-air glory. The top of the horse's head didn't really reveal much other than some standard Mongolian landscape and an unusual perspective up Ghengis' nose. After our full day we were tired on the way back to the hotel but filled the time by talking about Matt's investment possibilities - watch out for Cambridge Bean, coming soon to all places that could possibly fit a jelly bean machine in Cambridge. Since it was The Lion Boys and our last evening in Ulaanbaatar we had a few pints over dinner then tried to repack all our stuff.
Day 43- "I Can Only Drown"
Start: Crippled
Finish: Good-bye Ulaanbaatar
