But at least it seems to be like a lot of deserts. Feed it some rain and flowers grow.

We think there are more sand dunes and less vegetation to the West of us. However, travelling on our own we think that might be a bit ambitious.

The 4wd is to get us out of trouble, not into trouble!

We passed a convoy of about 10 cyclists, following a local 4wd, followed by a small bus.

Unlike the Mongolians they were in far too much of a hurry to stop ... though some of them waved.

It did occur to us that "hurry" and "cycling" were not synonomous.

But they were probably travelling almost as fast as us.

The track has varied from rough stones, smooth coarse sand, and corrugated hard sand and clay.

Speed has been between 30 and 40 km/hr. Comfortable for us.

There are occasional rough bits where water has settled, mud formed, trucks driven through it, dried out, more trucks to smooth it. Just like home!

Just outside Dargangalan.

These camels had found a biggish patch to drink from.

Middle of nowhere again. The silence is wonderful (when there aren't trains in the distance).

We had a visit from a mixed herd of goats and sheep.

The Mongolians don't seem to speak much - I guess they wouldn't if they knew they wouldn't be understood.

But we did exchange "hello" and smiles with the modern young herder on his motorbike.

Hauling stripped overburden to the top of the mullock heap.

Tall blocky looking buildings surrounded by gers.

The first thing we notice is that its harder to just drive off the edge and stop.

Grrrr. Who would think to spoil our fun by sealing the road.

Then again, it would be a bit selfish of us to impede progress!

There's one sealed road which leads past shops to the railway station.

Lots of work on sealing other parts of the town.

The bins looked like they are used for burning rubbish.

We imagine it gets quite busy at train time.

But right now the station is deserted.

Tyre pressure was about 40 psi on the desert roads. We pump them up to about 80 psi for the roads.

While pumping them up the hose from our compressor burst. The compressor outlet had become hot and weakened the hose. Fortunately cut a bit off and remake the join. The compressor has a 100% duty cycle at 120 psi. Hadn't bargained for the outlet getting hot! It takes quite a few minutes to pump a large tyre from 40 to 80 psi.

While waiting for things to cool this largish insect crawled past on its way to the next dung heap.

But the promise of some hills ahead.

Not sure what the ladders on the roof are for. Maybe clearing snow.

A gravel pit at the top of a small pass.

Our altitude is 1570 m. Erlian, at the border, was about 1000 m.

Overnight temperature was 13 deg C, daytime as high as 30 deg C.

The dark line is the railway. 

We've traveled 640 km in Mongolia and haven't seen any running water in rivers or creeks.

He's using a monocular to count his herd. He had two herds, one on either side of the road.

His wife / daughter / grand daughter was with him. Their horses were branded differently.

The saddle, and stirrups, looked just like the one in the museum at Sainshand. He was very bow legged!

I think they wondered what I was doing there and walked back to the Tardis with me.

Lots of smiles and they went on their way.