We negotiated a price ($40 for both of us), which was higher than Slava had told us to pay but seeing as how this was the first opportunity in almost 24 hours of waiting, we didn't want to let it go by. We got the bikes tied on, and all 7 adults piled into the jeep. There was the driver and an ancient Kazakh grandma sitting in the two front seats, a loud, abrasive pushy woman sitting in between them facing us in the back seat, and four of us, the guy from the morning, another lady who seemed to be the business associate of the pushy lady, me and Sam squeezed in the back seat, with all of our panniers, the other peoples' luggage, and several boxes of goods for sale crammed in the tiny back part of the jeep. We rode like that for about 100 yards where we reached the next, most major checkpoint. We all piled out again, unloaded all the luggage we had just loaded, and toted it all in to a massive office complex, where Russian soldiers seemed to be hurrying around as though this was the busiest checkpoint in the world. There was our carload, the trucker, and a carload coming from the other side. Three vehicles worth of people and stuff to check, not the busiest border crossing I have ever seen. Nevertheless, we spent almost 2 hours there, just waiting for customs people to get their act together. No problems, just a wait, we got through with nary a suspicious border tax from the Russians, despite the fact our registrations were less than the regulations demand.
Soon after starting out from the major checkpoint, we crossed one last Russian checkpoint within no-man's-land, then finally the Mongolian border. We again unloaded everything from the jeep for customs.
Sam and I filled in forms requesting the maximum time allowed for Americans, 90 days, and presented them to the border agent. She went through the routine questions in quite good English, like what our purpose was in Mongolia - tourists - where we were going - Ulaanbaatar - and how long would it take for us to get to Ulaanbaatar. We said 90 days, and she responded along the lines of the following, "It doesn't take 90 days to get to Ulaanbaatar. We said we were going by bicycle. Uncomprehending, she looked from me to Sam and back. I started making pedaling motions with my hands, thinking she hadn't understood the word. Sam did the same, saying "bicycle" in Russian, "na veloceoped", and she just kept staring at us. Finally she said in English, "Bicycle?" We nodded enthusiastically to indicate we had an understanding, smiling broadly to show we were both trustworthy and sane, and she said, "You go by bicycle to Ulaanbaatar whole way?" and we just kept nodding and smiling. She paused a moment, then hurriedly as though every second were needed for our trip, proclaimed, "You need 90 days", stamped our passports, and handing them to us said, "Welcome to Mongolia."
Strapping our bikes on top of the jeep for their ride across the Russian/Mongolian border.
