Remember going down a country lane until the tarmac ran out and picking your way across deep ruts, or perhaps going with the ruts and wincing as the car bottomed? And when you completed the 200 metres to the farmhouse or picnic spot or whatever, you heaved a sigh of relief - with just the slightest niggle that the return might be your undoing.
Now imagine doing that for 300 kilometres with an allocation of, say, 8 hours to do it. The average speed doesn't sound so bad - less than 40 kph / 25 mph. And you get some help because you've fitted a steel plate underneath the front of the car to protect the sump and vital parts.
There's a track....
It's brutal:
- the terrain is unforgiving: there's a track - often 100 metres wide with perhaps 6 or 8 'lanes' each of them rutted, littered with potholes, and as often as not, with corrugations, hard ridges across the line of travel, like mini-humps that shake the car and its contents (counterintuitively corrugations are often best taken faster - provided there aren't too many potholes). In this peculiar world stoney areas are almost welcome - more likely to puncture tyres than break an axle!
And there are the specials - sand drifts (got caught in one of those and had to be towed out) and flooded (supposedly dry) rivers - needed towing there too!
The car shakes and rattles. The bottom grounds. The wheels hit potholes awkwardly. The balance of probability at any moment is that the car will fail and then you'll be in the middle of nowhere relying on the satellite phone to call for help.
It's brutal on the crew too: the driver has to give full and sustained concentration to make the least bad of the track - 8 and more hours of that is no fun - and the navigator is guiding by heading as best the zigzagging tracks will allow towards a point in the desert/steppe distinguished only as a compass point (waypoint) recognised by a Garmin - a modified GPS system. (And to be followed by putting up a tent and car maintenance.)
I did a non-scientific study of car casualties over the period in Mongolia with results as follows:
a. immediate serious and car stopping damage: 20% - usually requiring a low loader
b. material damage to normal function either immediate or leading to later weakness 80% (for example our starter motor began sticking and had to be stripped down later in Novosibirsk - great nuisance getting jump starts etc and worry about conking out during day. Emerald still carries tears in the metal fabric of the body.
c. Minor scratches and abrasions or nothing: 0% - lucky bastards - keeping quiet with reason.
It's a minor miracle that Emerald stood up as well as she did. But I'm still wondering at the utility of it. Two days in the Gobi would have been interesting,challenging, scary and sufficient for me. 6 days more (8 if you count two equally challenging days I n adjacent Russia) was gratuitous violence and I'm not sure that the "satisfaction of achieving survival" really cuts it.
Now imagine doing that for 300 kilometres with an allocation of, say, 8 hours to do it. The average speed doesn't sound so bad - less than 40 kph / 25 mph. And you get some help because you've fitted a steel plate underneath the front of the car to protect the sump and vital parts.
There's a track....
It's brutal:
- the terrain is unforgiving: there's a track - often 100 metres wide with perhaps 6 or 8 'lanes' each of them rutted, littered with potholes, and as often as not, with corrugations, hard ridges across the line of travel, like mini-humps that shake the car and its contents (counterintuitively corrugations are often best taken faster - provided there aren't too many potholes). In this peculiar world stoney areas are almost welcome - more likely to puncture tyres than break an axle!
And there are the specials - sand drifts (got caught in one of those and had to be towed out) and flooded (supposedly dry) rivers - needed towing there too!
The car shakes and rattles. The bottom grounds. The wheels hit potholes awkwardly. The balance of probability at any moment is that the car will fail and then you'll be in the middle of nowhere relying on the satellite phone to call for help.
It's brutal on the crew too: the driver has to give full and sustained concentration to make the least bad of the track - 8 and more hours of that is no fun - and the navigator is guiding by heading as best the zigzagging tracks will allow towards a point in the desert/steppe distinguished only as a compass point (waypoint) recognised by a Garmin - a modified GPS system. (And to be followed by putting up a tent and car maintenance.)
I did a non-scientific study of car casualties over the period in Mongolia with results as follows:
a. immediate serious and car stopping damage: 20% - usually requiring a low loader
b. material damage to normal function either immediate or leading to later weakness 80% (for example our starter motor began sticking and had to be stripped down later in Novosibirsk - great nuisance getting jump starts etc and worry about conking out during day. Emerald still carries tears in the metal fabric of the body.
c. Minor scratches and abrasions or nothing: 0% - lucky bastards - keeping quiet with reason.
It's a minor miracle that Emerald stood up as well as she did. But I'm still wondering at the utility of it. Two days in the Gobi would have been interesting,challenging, scary and sufficient for me. 6 days more (8 if you count two equally challenging days I n adjacent Russia) was gratuitous violence and I'm not sure that the "satisfaction of achieving survival" really cuts it.
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