Syd Stelvio Peking to Paris 25 - Day 5 – Olon Bulag to Tengger Desert – 430km
It seems that some of our travelling bands have confused camping with sleeping in the hotel that just happens to be next to the campsite. Last time I checked that didn’t count, although perhaps the hotel put tents up in the room for them to pretend, a bit like you do for your kids when they’re small, because they’re desperate to go camping, but you know that in the middle of the night they’re just going to get scared and come running in. Yeah, I’m sure that’s what happened.
For those who had spent the night under canvas, the morning of day 5 began with a beautiful sunrise, albeit the wrong side of 5am. Still, that gave plenty of time to clear the sleep from one’s eyes, and tinker with vehicles ahead of an action-packed day on the trail.
There was a 216km drive out to the days first time control, along smooth, deserted highway, and whilst the day had started pleasantly enough, as the morning drew on the wind whipped up, drawing sand into the atmosphere as the outlook got ever hazier. The extra particles in the air were battering the drivers of the open top vehicles, and I daresay some of the crews would have preferred rain to being sandblasted for hundreds of kilometers.
Out of the TC, and fully exfoliated, there was the first of two competition sections to enjoy, a regularity aptly named ‘Sand Passage’, although sand in your passage may have been more accurate at this stage of the game, especially with the wind still in full force. The wind was such a presence, it actually blew a gate shut on the reg, delaying a number of competitors. Clearly the rallying gods were feeling playful today, or perhaps they were extracting their revenge on those that had shirked the camping.
We were fully into the tracks and sand of the Gobi itself by this point, though the route through the rock and sand was largely on one well defined track, riddled with the usual corrugations of trails of this type, that, if driven at the right speed become smooth and enjoyable experience, but if driven too slowly threaten to shake the fillings from your teeth. There were one or two places where the track split, offering a binary choice for the navigators, either get it right or get it wrong and some did get it wrong, disappearing off into the desert in the wrong direction, before realising their mistakes with some then going off piste to rectify the error as speedily as possible. Following the contours of the rocky wilderness was immense fun, but with very few points of reference for navigation.
Things are changing rapidly in China, and those that remembered this part of the route from last year will have been anticipating a long section of soft sand, on a track that wound its way up a long climb of several kilometres, onto the top of one of the many peaks in this part of the desert. As it was though, with the ever-expanding installation of wind turbines, what had once been sand was now a gravel track – albeit a rough one.
As well as things in China changing, the rally route can also change from what has been stipulated in the road books, depending on the feedback from the 48-hour advance car. There was just such a change today, to avoid a closed gate just under a km into the STC that followed the regularity. It was to be a lesson in always being up to date with the amendments, as several crews didn’t take the prescribed track and instead were met by the firmly shut gate instead. There were several cars that accrued large penalties on this section, including a pair of competitors in the top three of the Classic Category, Brian Palmer and David Bell in the Peugeot 504 who had been second, and John Henderson and Lui MacLennan in the Volvo 144 DL who had been running third.
A longish drive into the evenings camp remained, and as the weary crews pulled in, those hoping for another night in the adjacent Hilton were to be disappointed, as the location for the day 5 bivouac was a lot more remote than the previous evening, not a hotel in sight.
There was also not much in the way of phone signal, but for anyone who could get a connection the published days results would show that there had been a perfect day for Steve Osborne and Robert Smith in the 65 Escort RS1600, a second better than the Perez Compancs’, who consolidated their lead with just a second of penalty.
Syd