Through the valley’s and around the hills and mountains, I catch up with Katie Vincent and we ride on together. The horses travel well together, we ride past a mountain and see a group of mountain goat galloping down, they look amazing with their massive horns, unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a good photo of them. During that leg it got pretty warm around 30C and at about 30km the horses hit a wall and don’t feel like doing much other than walking and eating and so he got the name “Lazy Dun”. I find a nice muddy puddle and offer my horse a drink, he didn’t refuse and drank nearly the whole puddle empty. After that he had a bit more a of spring in his step, but was clearly not in a hurry to get anywhere! The last 5km look to take forever but we finally got there, I could manage to squeeze out a little trot for the vet and got the ok for soundness of the horse. Took the saddle off and walked him around a bit and offered him to get his heart rate taken, surely his heart rate is not high?! He is waaaaay to lazy to have a high heart rate, and surely his heart rate was 52, well below the 64 that is required. Everything else is good to, well hydrated, good gutsounds ect. So I can finally pick a new horse for the next leg! I ask the Mongol herders with help of one of the interpreters, for a fast and good horse, it was time for a horse that wants to go and I don’t think I would’ve been able to handle another Lazy Dun kind of horse! They point at a white tall gelding, I have a look if it hasn’t got any rubs or something nasty and decide to take him. I show them my saddle and quickly fill up my water have a few pieces of bread, sweets and I’m ready to go again. I want to get back to my horse but it’s gone! The guys must’ve misunderstood me when I told them I was going to get some water and food.... O well there are plenty of other horses left. Again I ask for a good and fast horse, they show me a little stallion, he looks fine but then I see that he’s got some nasty girthgalls, I touch it carefully and the little stallion nearly kicks my head in! I thank them but I do NOT want to ride this guy, next they show me a lean chestnut. He looks to be super fit and the translator tells me it used to be used for nadaam’s. Well that’s always good, I give him a quick check and seems to be in good shape. The Mongols put my saddle on the horse, he has a little hump and doesn’t look to be very saddle broken, so I ask if they can ride him for me so that I can see the horse is safe to ride. One of the Mongols hop on him and rides him for 50 meters up and back, the horse is not fussed and does what it’s told. Time for me to get on, I ready to go to urtuu 2, I quickly find Katie Vincent, and we’re on our way again. My horse is super keen and wants to get going, Katie’s horse is taking it a bit more steady. The scenery is absolutely stunning! A big open valley ahead and beautiful rock formations on our right, with herds of horses standing in the shade of a few trees. Around the corner I see Lynne Gilbert and Sandra Fretelliere, so does my horse and he tries his hardest to get close to them. Katie is a couple hundred meters behind me and taking it in an easy peace, something that my horse wasn’t too happy with. You can try to ride together but if your horses don’t travel well together it will only be frustration. I decide to ride on with Sandra and Lynne, there are plenty of other riders for Katie to ride with and we'll meet up at the next urtuu. It seems that Sandra’s blue eyed horse is best mates with my horse, who I gave the name ‘Fast Ed’, everywhere Ed go’s Blue Eyed horse follows us or calls out to Ed.