Day 4: Erenhot to border

Mongolia is a vast wealthy country, with only 2.5 million inhabitants. It covers a land mass 7 times the size of France, bigger than Europe. It resembles what we have seen in old western movies about the USA in the 1800's and then add cell phones, high speed Internet and cars...cars every where in Ula an Bataan. Which only has six roads, three going N/S and three going E/W. They drive like they are on bicycles and I seriously doubt that anyone has told them about road regulations. This creates chaos at all three intersections, bad enough that it can take 40 minutes to cross from one side of the town to the other. It was a kind of relief to get out of town and be able to drive freely until we made the discovery that the asphalt also stopped. We should have noticed that things were beginning to look a little sandy We drove right into a huge sandstorm as we were nearing the border with Mongolia Then to make matters worse, we had to pitch our tents in a massive sand storm, and later on in the night it started to rain. Just to coat us completely in dust and dirt.