Lakeside Finale

Our final chapter resumes at a ratty, overgrown guesthouse in Murun, scheming of a last spur up to a most scenic lake, Khuvsgul, near the Russian border.

With our arrival in Murun, we’re near the end of the journey. All that remains is to see Lake Khuvsgul. With our route being entirely paved the 100km to Khatgal town on its southern shores, we were feeling some peace of mind with no bumps and hoping that no further equipment failures would befall us with the favorable conditions.

We dawdled half the day before setting off for the storied lake 100km north. Something about a kilometer of elevation gain through the mountains north of Murun tempered our eagerness to leave in a hurry. We hoped to find a vegan-friendly breakfast at the one nice hotel in Murun but it was a letdown, especially as it didn’t even include coffee. Still, it wasn’t hard to fill up on vegetable sides and pluck around on Wifi.

We broke up the distance to Lake Khuvsgul in half, stopping at a small town called Alag-Erdene to camp along the scenic river that southern Lake Khuvsgul’s outflow creates. It was convenient to ride through the town and camp on its riverbanks, but we immediately became a spectacle for the locals as we started dinner. I would guess most tourists blast past the town on the way to the lake, so even domestic tourists are a rarity. I can’t blame them for being curious and overly friendly with us in a shared use area. The multiple groups that hung out with us leaned more amusing than unsettling, and we got a couple cups of beer to go with the attention at least.

The next day, it didn’t take long to reach Khatgal, on the lakeshore. We got coffee and provisions in this bustling tourist town, but no lake views until another 30km around a forested mountain pass. We were originally going to head to the more remote eastern shore, but a friendly motorbiker gave us a tip to camp on the more accessible and more developed western shore. A British reality show Claire likes, Race Across the World, apparently featured a location for the end of its race that we co-opted for our own camping finale. And with our arrival at Khuvsgul, we had reached our apogee and felt some real celebratory vibes.

This lake was one of the most amazing places I’ve been to. It’s huge, ice-cold and crystal clear; it’s so clean, it’s even potable as is. To set up a camp on its shores and take an icy bath was a simple, stunning luxury. The area where we stayed was loaded with resorts, summer camps, and tourist infrastructure everywhere. Speedboats were a common sight coming and going, as were kids playing. We had some simple hiking and kayaking trips between our dips to extend the leisurely vibes. Just a few kilometers past where we encamped, the lake quickly grows wild, the roads end, and there’s barely any other civilization until a town, Khankh, with 2,000 people on the far north end of the lake.

For our ride back, we tried a forest path “shortcut” I found on Gaia Maps. We would cut off 20km of roads and be ensconced in the woods instead of fending off traffic and climbing the nearby mountain pass again. Though it was beautiful, not only was it too bumpy to do more than walk the bikes through most of it, but it also ended in a detour that had us hike the bikes up 200 meters to a bizarre, dead-end road. We were pretty whipped after that and stealth camped on the edge of Khatgal’s town limits, where the water was much less attractive for a casual swim and the overall vibe was slightly grimy. Multiple rusted boat hulks and buildings were a bizarre look to cultivate for a tourist town. Despite all that, there was definitely a party vibe with the overall density of vacationers here too.

I had us heading back a day or two quicker than needed to make sure we could deal with all the mercurial aspects of Mongolian transit. Though there are daily buses from Murun to Ulaanbaatar, you can’t pre-buy more than several days ahead, nor is there English on the ticketing website, so we had to roll up the night before and buy tickets. I had to make it back by that final Friday before our flight so I could finish my visa paperwork. That would wind up giving us almost another week to relax and enjoy the mild summer climate and conveniences of civilization again.

How to prepare for a 14-hour overnight bus is an eternal quandary. There’s no real way to make an experience like that comfortable. Claire and I did share an audiobook (St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility) and take brief naps leaning against each other, but it was otherwise simply something to endure. Sounds of crying children and phone slop were frequent, though mercifully petered out as night took its hold. Gazing at Mongolia’s active storms far on the horizon was a soothing nocturnal meditation. Our last reserves of strength got our bikes reassembled and back to the guesthouse through city traffic before spending a day recovering in bed.

That our journey finished at Lake Khuvsgul felt pretty special to me. It was definitely my favorite stop on the trip. Maybe I could have done without the grueling bus ride to follow, but that adds to the charm in a way. Had we not had so many mechanical issues, we might have been able to tag it as part of a loop that brought us back to Ulaanbaatar through the country’s north, alas. There’s always some what-if’s on any journey, so we weren’t sweating it as we kicked back and got our last chores done before returning to Tokyo.