We say goodbye to the local camels and head to Altay with the Peugeot and the other Micra which shreds another tire (last spare) on the way. At a mechanic’s shop in Altai we get a tube put in one of our flat tires and find another flat tire in the town that we have a tube put in so we are back to 3 spares - although all of our tires are looking pretty shabby now. We leave the other Micra behind as it needs to have some suspension work done. As we hit the road out of town headed for Bayanhonger we lose our rear bumper and notice that only 2 out of 4 feet remain on the roof rack so we throw a ratchet strap on the rack and strap the bumper to the roof to get back on the road. A couple hours later our compasses convince us that we must have taken the wrong dirt track…. something that is actually hard to avoid. The Mongolians will only use a grader to shape a road in this country if absolutely necessary, in the flats there are only the tracks left by those before you. If the road gets rutted out it is better to just make a new track - which everyone does .In the end you have a 20 lane highway except the lanes can be miles apart, making it really hard to distinguish intersections from parallel tracks. After a while some locals say that we can continue on this road and end up where we want to be. We plug out into the heart of the Gobi desert armed with our wits and compasses. Just as the sun goes down we loose track of team Signature (Peugeot) and assume that they have taken a different road by accident. We back track and drive the paths that they were likely on, to no avail, then decide to drive to a good view point and turn on the lights. Magically, as we do, we see the another car driving up a ridgeline miles away, get to the top and turn their lights on. A bit of Morse code and a telephoto camera confirm we have found each other. The day is called there. In the morning we feel that we now have a good idea of where we are in the desert, unfortunately we also have a flat front tire.
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