Ulaanbaatar, Aug 27

After packing up from the most windy night ever we go check out some monks chanting in the temple before hitting the road towards Ulaanbaatar, only a few hundred km away now! As we are turning from the detour road back onto the main track, like magic, the Canadians go flying by in the Suzuki followed by the ambulance who is also carrying the guys from the other Peugeot! The original convoy is united for the finishing stretch. The other Peugeot finally died, not because of the assumed dead ECU, but because they hit a rock so hard it bent the oil pan up and tore the oil pump off, breaking the flange on the block. Smooth sailing into Ulaanbaatar, including driving through the city at rush hour on a Friday (craziest driving of the trip), and we arrive at the finishing line. Beers and trading stories with other teams filled the evening. It turns out that the Fiat from a few days ago, while driving a few hours out of Ulaanbaatar with an ambulance, saw a car violently roll off the road, throwing a man and women from the car, two kids were inside. The kids were fine, but the man and women were in bad shape. None of the guys had any first aid training, but as there is no real emergency services in Mongolia, they used the stretcher to load the man into the ambulance and put the women into another rally teams van (van showed up after the crash) and took them to the hospital. Sadly, the man died on the way, and the woman was not doing well with severe head injuries. In the end a half dozen rally teams stopped to help (every team that drove by), a prefect example of the quality of the guys and girls that we have travelled with.