June 5th: Akespe to Beyneu

Once again we’ve had our hardest day yet. We started the day on gravel, getting passed by everyone who started later than us with more capable off-roading vehicles. The road was filled with washboard and potholes and the air was hot and dry. We limped through the whole day while the dashcam began to malfunction. The heat made troubleshooting too laborious. After one of the last turns we noticed to route back would have us go 80km north while the camp was 40km to the west. Remembering the lesson we learned from our drive into the Gobi Desert, we decided to check the our garmin GPS to make sure we were on the right track. Sure enough it told us we were headed the wrong way and to cut under some powerlines to go right to the camp. We spent 2 hours driving this route as it turned from road to riverbed to nothing. The hole for our gear shifter collected as much sand as possible as we drove over bushes and gulleys, realizing over the way we definitely should’ve followed the route book. Only 10km before camp we drove over some sort of plastic netting on the ground and tore a hole in the sidewall of our tire so we popped the spare on and continued. We finally arrived at camp to find the food and beer had also been sitting in the desert heat for the last day as the camp generator had broken. We ate what we decided could not give us food poisoning and enjoyed a warm beer before bed.