10 Dollars well spent? You decide.

J- After our 8 days in Khovd we wanted to visit Bayan Olgi, which we were told was a very bumpy six hour drive away. If we wanted to rent our own jeep and driver, it would have cost over 200 dollars. So, we found a jeep that was leaving on the day we wanted (actually, someone found the jeep for us, and made the arrangements) for just 10 dollars each. The price was right! We were told to be at the jeep at 2 pm. We got there at 1:30 to make sure it didn't leave without us. We sat on the sidewalk in the shade nearby until 3:30.

When we got in the jeep, it was us and one other guy besides the driver. After a few in-town stops, we were on our way at 4pm with 8 adults and 2 children in the car. This was not a van or SUV, it was a Russian, no frills, basic-as-you-can-get jeep. There were 5 of us in the back - Clayton sat in the middle seat and I sat on his lap where I could not sit up straight, but had to hunch over for the whole 6 hours to avoid smashing my head on the car ceiling every other minute.

5 of the people in the car were moving to Khazakhstan, and so had brought a good amount of belongings with them. The man sitting to the left of us had one big box on the floor between his legs, and another on his lap. In the trunk were our suitcases, sleeping bags, a few other duffle bags, and about 7 sacks of various produce, mostly potatoes, onions and mellons. To our right was an old couple. The old man was so happy to talk to us (in Mongolian, so we were clueless mostly) and chain smoke for most of the ride. The one baby in the front seat went between sleep, crying and vomiting quite a bit. There was no leg room, no elbow room, nothing! I can imagine that we actually really looked like packed sardines in there if someone saw us from the outside!

Now, on top of all that, imagine driving over the bumpiest terrain you can imagine in a crappy jeep that has no air conditioning in 90 degree weather and only 3 small windows. On top of that add the smell of exhaust and dust that chokes you and coats everything inside . We stopped every now and then thankfully and we made it to Olgi by 10pm. It was dark by the time we got there, so I took out our little book light to use as a flashlight. The old guy we were riding with was so impressed by it he pulled out (the equivalent of) 5 dollars from his wallet and wanted to buy it from us right then! I have to say, its pretty awesome as far as book lights go. We really wanted to give it to him as he would use it more than us, but it was our only light source and we would need it if we were going to go camping while we were there. I hated saying no. So, if any of you are thinking about sending things, apparently little book lights would be a big hit!

We don't recommend the jeep ride. We were supposed to take a jeep back to Khovd a few days later and then fly back to UB from there, but after the experience we decided to just fly straight back rather than abuse our bodies any more than we already had. Changing our tickets cost us only 17 dollars.

Photo of the jeep below at one of our pit-stops.