It’s seven in the morning. The owner, an arrogant individual, is greatly offended that we wish to inspect the vehicle. What on earth are we thinking of, his is a serious establishment. With fourteen years of experience in the travel business, that is Nassan Tours. She points repeatedly at the photocopied A4 sized paper on the wall. Some sort of certificate, where they praise themselves to the high heavens. See the certificate, she gesticulates, everything will be in top order, their services include car rental, with driver. What are we trying to suggest, anyway and how come a Mongolian phoned them in our name, why did we not phone them ourselves? They are perfectly capable of speaking English. We close our eyes for a brief second, heave a big sigh and patiently wait for her to phone the driver to collect us and take us to the airport. The money is already in our hands (650 USD, one way) we move to hand it over when the driver phones. He is tired, no can do. So much about Nassan.
09.00: In three hours time we are due to meet the arriving group at the airport. As our last resort, stressed out and anxious we head for the local cab station. Here jobless cab drivers wait sometimes days for someone to come and hire them. Anar’s mom is there to help us. We manage to find a driver who for 100 dollars a day will take us to Hatgal in his UAZ minivan with luggage rack, and we can set off straight away. Of course the cost of fuel falls to us, which means 600 miles, 30ltrs/100 miles and 1500 local currency for 1 liter. Of course we have to pay for all four days in advance. Our hands are tied, we agree to anything. He asks for an hour to go home and collect his stuff, then we head for Anar’s house where we collect our own luggage and off we wiz to the airport.
At the airport we bump into a high-ranking military official whom we had to contact when both Hungarian and Mongolian diplomatic organization realized that a well-known Hungarian politician intended to join our upcoming expedition. I explain our situation to him. He pats me on the back and kindly reprimands me for not asking him for help sooner. Of course we ask the same questions. He makes one phone call, informs us that the border crossing permits are ready at our disposal. All we need to do is register ourselves at the border crossing point. They know about us there and are expecting our arrival. He makes two phone calls and all of a sudden there are flight tickets available for our journey back from Murun. All we need to do is collect and pay for it upon arrival. The group arrives; we pack our bags into the booth of the UAZ, pile into the crammed seats and fire the engine into life. Late at night, in the middle of a thunderstorm along flooded roads in the pitch black darkness we decide not to set camp for the night but to press on till Khatgal. 650 miles, no less.