stepping up the pace

We are now at the end of day three in Mongolia and have moved from 4 star hotel in UB to 5 star tent (yut) in the foothills of the most stunning mountain scenery. Our position as of this morning was rather more due to our inexperience on rallying than any failure to perform to the necessary level. Basically we took a relaxed drive in between timed sections on day one and two and incurred an unexpected time penalty. We feel we have now worked out where we went wrong and the Aston responded accordingly. She is running beautifully and in spite of increasing altitude and deteriating fuel quality she has performed perfectly. In spite of starting one and a half hours behind the leaders due to class we arrived at our over night with the early cars. Not only does this mean we have the pick of the beds in our shared yut! We also received a tipple or two of very fine Talisker from the Bentley Boys before it all ran out! We had one time trial which was most easily described as a 30km run through a game reserve. In fact at one point our path was blocked by two very large camels. We managed a stop to meet some local nomadic herders and are about to discover the joys of whatever stew is on offer. The scenery is simy awesome. We are now at Kharakorin the former capital of Mongolia. 360 km in total. The day started at only 8 degrees and is now about 20. Time for supper. Thanks for watching. Andrew and Adrian