another night in ulaanbaatar and daddy is starting to get nervous of the city.

today we are glad to be in the city as this morning we had one of the worst mornings of the trip. last night we had cleverly decided to sleep down a slope in an overpriced national park just outside ulaanbaatar. the night was one of the coldest yet and lewis was sick in the tent. daddy, tessie and lewis went to sleep in the car but none of us could get much sleep. at six o'clock we had to get up in the cold and rain to pac away. our way out, however, was impeeded by the muddy slope and the precipation, which, at this point, consisted of sleet, snow and rain.

daddy, tessie and i were soaked through but we donned the waterproof trousers anyway in a bid to keep warm. my specialist sailing trousers meant that i was not cold but did it lots of the water that i had already collected inside.

we took over 5 attempts to get wilma (with larry detatched) up the main bit of the hill and i cannot count how long we had to push her. most of the time wilma slipped backwards especially as we had little or no grip on the wet and muddy slope. tessie and i also had task of ensuring we had chocks ready for the big sliding down the slope.

although wilma had tried to kill us on many an occasion, with unpredicatable sliding, we all felt sorry for her and her thick layer of mud. however, i remained wet in the car all the way back to ulaanbaatar so prehaps was not a sympathetic as others.

i would like to add at this juncture that larry, too, had to be pushed up the slope as did his contents which we had taken out to make the load lighter.

the whole incident was not so great at the time but looking back on it, it definately counts as japes.

tessie and lewis are currently ill- this is both a cause of 'the incident' this morning and a result of it.