I woke up this morning to the sunniest warmest day I’ve had since coming back to Mongolia, I mean really hot, the perfect day to get on Dozer and go exploring the rolling hills near Karakorum. I hopped onto Dozer and click hmm click hmm Dozer was dead again. Okay chin up don’t panic I run over to the last 4×4 about to leave the camp and ask them if they have jumper cables and can jump start my bike. No problem they say and we give it a go, and we try and we try and if at first you don’t succeed just try and try again  … how many times is that. OK the battery is now clearly charged and Dozer is still not starting and I keno this can only mean the spark plugs. The 4×4 leaves and I take Dozer back to the ger and change the plugs and try again click hmmm click GORRRR yippee he starts. I jump with joy, literally run inside while he is warming up and throw my jacket and helmet on and as I step outside I hear him stall. No problem he started once he’ll start again. REALLY well maybe not, once again he is dead. I sit on the bench outside the ger and literally for the first time since all the bike problems with Dizzy and the changes and cancellation of China I came close to crying. Now funny enough I am an emotional person and I do cry I cry in sad movies, happy movies even at the news. If people shout at me I cry. People think I’m this uber strong independent woman and a real tom boy but I can really shed the tears.  When my friend Angie passed away I thought the tears would never stop I just looked at someone and would burst out crying. However I have not cried for any of the disappointments I’ve had on the trip, I just took them as part of the adventure. I got depressed and sad or angry but I never cried…today I came close but it just didn’t happen.

Right plan of action time. I need decided that I need to go and see something , do something , sight see. So I walk the 2 kms from the ger camp through town to the monastery in Karakorum. Considering I’ve done no real exercise on this trip the walk did me good.

I really enjoyed seeing the monastery and realised that I’d done very little actual sightseeing on my trip. I had done a lot of experiencing of the countries and cultures and have met many interesting people but done very little sightseeing so I ended up really enjoying the day. Mongolia is a poor country and although the museums are interesting to see their upkeep definitely reflects this. The irony is that the country has a wealth of minerals and there are many mines in Mongolia but clearly the rich are getting richer and the nothing tricks down to the average Mongolian, villages or historical sites.

After seeing the museum and having lunch (not goat, which I have fortunately been able to avoid on this trip to Mongolia all but once) I started on the long boring hot dusty 2km walk home. It was half way through this walk that the thought occurred to me that in order to remove the spark plug from Dozer I needed to take off the petrol tank and in order to do that I needed to turn the petrol off…”had I switched it back on” now I’m not really a ditzy broad but sometimes I do have a bad memory and do make some silly mistakes was this one of them… I have never walked so fast in my life, genuinely hoping that this was one of those silly mistakes. Getting back the first thing I did was rush to check Dozer.

Now at this point I could lie to you and make something up, but I’ve never been a liar, probably because I don’t have a good poker face. So the truth is yes I had forgotten to turn the petrol on and turning the igniting key to hear Dozer purr once more was the biggest relief ever 8)