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We left the town. This was all desert country. The sun burned hot, the temperature increasing quickly.
After about 100 miles we ran into an unpleasant surprise. Although all the maps showed that there was a street from Zonid Soqi (the first town past Xilinhot) to Erenhot (the border town to Mongolia), in reality it was only a wide sandy track that ran across the plain and towards some mountains in the distance. Either I took this 100 mile track to the border, hoping that at one point it would turn into a tarred road again, or I needed to turn south and make a detour of about 200 miles.
The track looked good enough with the sand compacted by the many trucks that had passed here. After some consideration and kicking at the truck’s tires I decided to take the risk. Towards the south, low sand dunes became visible. My nervousness increased. If the road would take us into those dunes we might get stuck in that sand and would then have to walk the remainder to Outer Mongolia.