Mountain Biking Across Outer Mongolia

A couple of weeks ago, I went to watch Armenia play ice hockey. The match was part of the 2010 Inter­na­tional Ice Hockey Fed­er­a­tion World Cham­pi­on­ships. Being a 3rd divi­sion group match, it fea­tured coun­tries not usu­ally asso­ci­ated with winter sports — South Africa, North Korea, and on this occa­sion, Mon­go­lia, who were promptly thrashed 15–0 by Armenia.

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.

What attracts me to this place? Many of the reas­ons are lost in a rose-tinted world of romantic notion — vast mountain-flanked steppe, nomadic yurt-dwelling horse­men, the des­cend­ants of an ancient empire liv­ing now as they have for thou­sands of years. There aren’t many places left that have res­isted mod­ern­ity for as long as Mon­go­lia has.

At the same time, I know that the real­ity will be exactly that — real­ity. I’ll leave Mon­go­lia with those romantic notions blown clean away. That kind of exper­i­ence doesn’t come from any­thing but a thor­ough, ground-level explor­a­tion of a place and people.

nomad dusk on Flickr by chrisdebruyn

It’s also the chal­lenge. It’s pretty nor­mal for adven­tur­ous folk to hanker after some­thing big­ger, bet­ter, harder, more exhilir­at­ing than what came before. Rid­ing across the Sahara, Afar and Ara­bia was chal­lenge enough, but I needed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent, some­thing scary. I thought a couple of thou­sand kilo­metres of dirt tracks through the most sparsely-populated coun­try on Earth might do it.

This will be the first time I’ve hooked up with my old mate Andy for an adven­ture since we par­ted com­pany in the Cau­casus more than two years ago. I’m look­ing for­ward to being part of a two-man team again, after the long and lonely road I rode last year.

As always, huge thanks to our spon­sors for stick­ing with us through this unpre­dict­able voy­age — Kona, Magura, Leis­ure Lakes and Chain Reac­tion Cycles for their bike kit; Extrawheel and Car­radice for their luggage-carrying solu­tions, and other bits and pieces from Buff, MSR, Schwalbe, SKF and ODI. I wouldn’t have these guys on board if their kit wasn’t up to the job.

I am aim­ing to raise £1000 for the very appro­pri­ate cause of The Wil­der­ness Found­a­tion UK through this chal­lenge. So I need your help to get there! If you can spare a fiver, please visit my fun­drais­ing page now and drop a dona­tion in the pot. The abil­ity to give some­thing back will make that dis­tant paved road feel so much sweeter when I get there.

Blog­ging from the road will be unavoid­ably sporadic, but expect a thor­ough account of the trip to be pub­lished — one way or another — on this site for your read­ing pleasure.

Ta-ta for now!

Thanks for read­ing. You might also like these recent articles:

• Four Spec­tac­u­lar Moments From Mongolia
• Off The Map In Cent­ral Mon­go­lia — A Photo Essay
• Get A Post­card From Outer Mongolia