Road Distance Signs (Milestones)

I've just spent a week driving around Mongolia .... well, more like being driven around :-) Now, over most of the country there are not much in the way of roads, more like tracks, and these are pretty much totally unmarked. However, there are a couple of main roads running through the country. One, for example, runs from the Russian border in the north, through Ulaanbaatar to the Chinese border in the south, paralleling the railway line.

One of the interesting things on these roads is the travelling distance signs (milestones they would have been in the dim dark days of the past). For example, in Australia, if I was driving to Sydney on the Pacific Highway and I saw a sign that said '85', then that sign is telling me I have 85 kilometres to go before reaching Sydney. The next sign I saw might say '80', telling me I had 80 kilometres to go, and so on.

The signs like this (and the old milestones for that matter) are the same and work like this in every country I have been to .... except Mongolia.

Here, if I am driving from Ulaanbaatar and I see a sign on the side of the road that says '80', then it is telling me not that there is 80 kilometres to go until the next town is reached but rather it is saying that I have travelled 80 kilometres FROM Ulaanbaatar. The next sign I see may then say '85'.

Before poo pooing this, think. When giving directions in Australia we generally say something like "head up the Pacific Highway about 80 kilometres and look for the turn" not "head up the Pacific Highway until you are 240 kilometres from the next town and then turn right." The Mongolian system makes it easier to do this.

The picture is a manually powered ferry that we had to use during the Road Trip to cross one of the rivers here (the Onon gol in Khentii).