It was 10 days before we reached the next settlement. During that time, we rode swooping forest singletrack and dragged our bikes up impossibly-steep scree slopes. We pushed through axle-deep swampland and camped by the most pristine lakeside I’ve ever set eyes on. We found Mongolians on horseback and others who had driven huge ancient Russian off-road trucks cross-country, carrying numerous families to a natural hot spring for a few days’ camping. We spent two full days hiking along a valley floor of dry gravel and wading across channels of meltwater from the mountains above. My feet started to disintegrate from several days spent in permanently wet boots. We got completely lost and finally found our way out onto the vast, pock-marked, marshy plain to the west of the Khovsgol basin. This had been some of the most interesting and challenging adventuring of my life.

We planned to visit another settlement at the far end of the plain, but instead we spent two days lost amongst the hillocks and small lakes, unable to find a way through the tangle of rivers and sand pits and marshes in this rapidly-changing landscape in which nothing corresponded to anything we’d seen on a map. Faint tracks disappeared over newly-eroded riverbanks and into spontaneously-appearing patches of desert. We trudged through the worst of it and otherwise ground the gears between gers and timber-built dwellings, asking in quiet desperation for the way out of the labyrinth and accepting invitations to drink milky tea (without salt in this region) and eat bread and freshly-churned butter.

We spent the evening attending a family gathering quite literally in the middle of nowhere, where vodka combined with a cyclist’s metabolism and a severe lack of resistance to the effects of alcohol to produce a variety of interesting effects. This dip into Mongolian society, sparse as it is, was for me the final piece of the picture of Mongolia that I had been looking for in order to go home satisfied with the experience I’d had here.

Since the last photo essay proved so popular, here’s another! I’ll be writing the trip up in more detail over the next few weeks.

Leaving Home / Photo by Tom Allen

We left our guesthouse in Moron and headed north for Khovsgol. Tourist season hadn’t started and things were still very quiet. And cold.
Horses are losing favour to motorbikes as a form of cross-country private transport in Mongolia, but horsemen are still a fairly common sight.
The reach of the Soviet Union’s building projects spans an unimaginably large swathe of Eurasia. Relics like this can be found from the Bering Straits to Eastern Europe.

Nomad Dusk / Flickr photo by chrisdebruyn

There aren’t many places left that have resisted modernity for as long as Mongolia has.

I’ve dreamt of biking across Mongolia for many years. Back in 2006, when I was preparing to start a new life on the road, I made vague plans to include the country in my route. I never expected it would be this long before I went there. But such dreams aren’t easily forgotten. Right now, I’m journeying across Siberia by train, heading for a distant city called Ulaan Bataar.

Continue reading this article @ Ride Earth – Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog

Mongol Rally / Photo by The Adventurists

Ever since they had their first disclaimer drawn up The Adventurists have had social goals at the heart of operations.  Their aim is to raise a million pounds every year for charity.  They’ve recently established Adventures for Development – A charity to get money to projects in those harder to reach areas of the world. All projects will have a real impact on the local comunity and progress will be reported back to the teams who raised the cash.

“Imagine yourself in the middle of the gargantuan Kazakh desert, your car slowly being shredded by the dirt track your map says is a motorway, completely lost hundreds of miles from civilisation with no back up crew to rescue you. Just you, your wits, your increasingly brown pants, a car that the laws of physics say shouldn’t have got you past Peckham Rye and a slightly angry looking man with a gun.”

- The Adventurists

The other three journeys they’ve created are equally nuts and require a similar lack of concern for your well being:

• The Rickshaw Run will be happening three times during 2009.  Participants drive, push, pull a 150cc  three-wheeled Indian Rickshaw thousands of miles across the subcontinent over two weeks.
• The Africa Rally was first run in July this year from London to Cameroon over four weeks.  Transport once again must adhere to the one litre rule introduced on the mongol rally, unless of course you choose to travel on two wheels in which case the  0.125 litre rule is enforced.
• Ruta del Sol is the latest edition to their portfolio and involves driving a VW Beetle from Quito, Ecuador to Rio in Brazil.  Señor Pablo will help you to secure your wheels in Ecuador but after that you’re on your own.

Rarely is it possible to find such good spirited, organised chaos, and with all events raising huge sums of money for charities around the world it is certainly not pure self indulgent hedonism.

“We don’t want guided tours up the first third of Everest. We don’t want some gangly suntanned arse from Peckham explaining how the “locals” cook pickled gonads while ushering us around tourist sites we saw last week on the telly. Flush your guide books down the loo people. Join The Adventurists in our battle with an increasingly boring, sanitised world.”

- The Adventurists