Difference between revisions of "2016-07-02 47 106"

Revision as of 15:19, 27 May 2019

Location

On a spur south of Ulaanbataar.

Participants

Expedition

Sunday 3 July

Kathryn and I had got back from Ulgii in Western Mongolia where we spent a couple of weeks horse riding in the Altai Mountains. We'd made it to Ulaanbataar in time for the Australian election, on which we engorged ourselves for the entire beery day.

In the morning I had the epiphany of looking up the geohash locales. And boy, what a sweetie - on a ridge just 5kms south of our hostel. Off for a walk we went. Mongolia's first geohash.

The sun shone so, also owing to a dearth of taxis, we decided to walk. Within minutes, though, we spotted a bike shop, and thus procured some hired bikes to proceed in a more hastily fashion.

Through town, over the river, the sun drenching the windscreens of passing motorists. A glorious ride up into the decaying wasteland of post-boom unfinished housing construction burbs.

At the junction of the public road and the gradually deteriorating abandoned site roads I thought about what an ideal day and location had been granted to us. Perhaps my insistence of the lack of deities controlling affairs had been misplaced.

At that moment I became suspicious. I rechecked the hash droid, anxiety welling within me. Yes. This hash was for yesterday. Today's was unreachable.

Foolishly I immediately alerted Kathryn, whose deflated enthusiasm slowed her down after we decided to reach the point anyway.

We locked up the bikes and trudged up the hill with an attitude of grim resolution. The view of Ulaanbataar swelled below us, revealing the city to be much taller and vaster than we'd suspected from within it. We took some photos from the top of a coll before sidling around to yesterday's geohash. We returned home via the river bike path, I singing Gilbert and Sullivan's 'My Eyes Are Fully Open'.

We commiserated ourselves by seeing the destruction of the world in Independence Day 2 at the cinema.