Mongolia Motorcycle Tour

Nine nights round the Mongolian steppe from Ulaanbaatar, guided, eleven hundred kilometres mostly off-road with yurt camps throughout.

The operator is candid that this is the one tour where the itinerary is not fixed. The steppe is vast, the weather decides, there are two highways in the whole country, and the route gets recalibrated by the local guides as conditions change.

Ulaanbaatar opens and closes it with two nights in a four-star hotel. The riding then heads out across grass, mud, sand and rivers, with seven nights in yurt camps and the option of wild camping with all the equipment provided. The hot springs of Ovorkhangai province supply a rest for tired bodies. Karakorum follows, Mongolia’s former capital, where the walled and brightly painted temples are unlike anything else in the country, and the Tovkhon Monastery, one of the oldest Buddhist sites there, sits on a mountain top reachable only on horseback or on foot. A quarter of the population still lives nomadically on this land, in a country twice the size of Turkey with a population smaller than many single cities.

Two nights in the Ulaanbaatar hotel, seven in comfortable yurt camps, eight days of Suzuki DRZ 400 rental with a GasGas or KTM 350 upgrade available, a local tour guide, a back-up van and a mechanic, and an experienced operator guide are all included. Late July into early August is the departure, which is the short window the steppe allows. Anyone who would rather not ride can travel in the support vehicle, a Soviet-era UAZ that the operator rightly describes as an adventure in itself. Ten days of mostly off-road riding needs real competence rather than enthusiasm.