Saturday, May 10, 2014
We woke up to find that it had been raining overnight. A little surprising, as we haven’t seen rain in a good while. Another long day of driving planned so everyone was ready to head north at just before the agreed 8am departure deadline.
We drove on the expressway much of the morning. There was probably some pretty nice mountain scenery to be seen, but unfortunately the rain and low cloud obscured it all. The morning was pretty uneventful, until Sterlin decided to complain a little with a “Check Engine Soon” lamp turning on. That hadn’t happened before. We immediately stopped and investigated the fault code, which turned out to be a miss-fire on cylinder 7. Once we had internet again this would be investigated further. In the meantime we felt it was ok to drive on and assume that we have dirty spark-plugs from all the exotic south-east-asia fuel we have been putting in Sterlin.
After lunch we stopped at the oldest existing wooden Pagoda in China; it also claims to be the oldest one in the world. The Pagoda of Fogong Temple dates back to 1056. Caroline made a quick visit while Stephen shared an ice-cream with Vaughan.
Later we arrived in a very cold and dusty Hunyuan with temperatures in the low teens. This might be an indication of the conditions we will experience in Mongolia. We broke out the warm clothing again. The evening stroll was freezing and the wind stirred up all the dust in the town. On the positive side we found this wonderful little cake store with a friendly lady.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
We woke up to a morning as wet and bleak as the night before was, and for a minute we wavered about going to see our planned destination for the morning. But common sense prevailed and off we drove to the Hanging Monastery. Despite the continuing rain we were not disappointed and got a good look at it. Glad we did not let ourselves miss that one 🙂
Afterwards it was only a short 60 odd kms drive to our next port of call Datong.
