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Page 5) 

are served with mutton boiled in water and your breakfast, lunch or dinner is ready. No matter at what time of the day you land in the resthouse, the food is always the same. If you don't like mutton, don't go to Mongolia, for that's all you are going to get. Only in districts near to China can you get noodles with it, later on you get just plain mutton. 

The next stopping place is [[underlined]] Panghsian [[/underlined]], the distance is not very great and you get there in ab^[[ou]]t 8 hours if the weather is dry, but if you have rain anywhere on that part of your journey, you may just as well strike for the nearest Mongol Tents and stay there, till it dries up again. I once had to wait for 3 solid days in some tents, till it stopped raining and before we could venture out again. The ground on this stretch of road is clay and on a rainy day you skid and get stuck, dig yourself out and get stuck again all the time. Generally speaking travelling in Mongolia depends on your luck, as you have no roads at all but only caravan and oxcart tracks, travelling is passable, if you strike some dry days but when it rains, first of all you get soaked through in your open car and then the car skids and slips, till you have to give it up. 

[[left margin]] Photo 8) [[/left margin]]

Panghsian is already in the Gobi Desert. When the world was made, there must have been a lot of big and small stones, sand and dust left over and all that material seems to have been thrown into the Gobi Desert. I believe, the place must have been a tremendous lake many thousand years ago, for the sand is mixed with small broken shells and you can see, where the tops of the hills have been washed flat by the waves. 

Travelling in summer to Urga is rotten, for the wind always blows from the south during that season, and as you are travelling to the North the wind caused by the motorcar is equalized by the Southwind with the result, that you are continuously in a cloud of dust, heat, gasoline and oil fumes. The worst is, that the water in the radiator keeps on boiling every twenty