Finding ourselves out of the big mountains and hills, no-one seemed to have much motivation to ride the few hundred flatter kilometres back to Ulaan Bataar for our flights out of Mongolia – particularly having to deal with UB traffic. Yet we still had four days to see what else Mongolia, just west of UB, had to offer.

It was so very low key – a short ride out of Kharkorin to stay with a nomad family for a night before hiring a van and driver to take us east over three days. I was quickly over time cooped up in the van (at least it had shock absorbers and air conditioning, but not nearly as much character as the Russian van we’d originally travelled in; the less said about the driver watching music videos the better) and was thinking we should have spent more time in the mountains.

But there were some highlights:

• Some of the meals at the nomad camp, including the refreshing, slightly fizzy fermented horse milk. Was certainly peaceful out there as our hosts generally left us alone.
• Camel (bactrian) riding at Little Gobi. What immense and wonderful animals.
• Seeing scores of the rare Przewalski horses (the only species of completely wild horses left) at dusk in Hustai National Park. We watched these for a long time, long after the other tourists had returned to the park gates for dinner.
• A day trip out of UB. The giant statue of Chinggis Kahn on a horse (largest equestrian statue in the world apparently, as was the giant boot inside) and the rock formations nearby, particularly Turtle Rock, were impressive in different ways.

Bikes all packed up, the morning trip to the airport was the complete opposite to our drive into the city four weeks earlier – no traffic jams and it only took forty minutes. So that was our first time in Mongolia – the riding was great, people fantastic, food better than expected, language very tricky and the bikepacking life not always the easiest but we more than got through ok and loved it.

Thanks for reading this far, here is the photo link again.