Gobi Discovery (Mongolia)

Fourteen nights in a loop from Ulaanbaatar, guided, through the Gobi on a Suzuki DR-Z400, with around sixty per cent of the route on gravel.

This is the most off-road of anything the operator sells anywhere. The DR-Z400 is an enduro bike rather than an adventure tourer, and the riding runs from high-speed open steppe to rocky creek beds, river crossings and tight mountain double-track.

The desert loop carries the route south, with a rest day at the singing sand dunes, where the sand makes a low sound as it shifts, and another at the Tsenger hot springs. Yolyn Am follows, a narrow gorge in the Gurvan Saikhan mountains known as Vultures Canyon, where the ice at the bottom survives well into summer. Erdene Zuu and the old city of Kharkhorin come next, the oldest surviving Buddhist monastery in Mongolia, raised in the sixteenth century from the stones of the Mongol capital and part of the Orkhon Valley world heritage landscape. Nights are spent in ger camps.

The bike hire is included; the full inclusions are not itemised on the operator’s page and are worth confirming at booking. A three-day excursion to the Naadam festival can be added before the start, with the wrestling, horse racing and archery that go back to the era of Genghis Khan. Fifteen days of this asks for real dirt experience rather than tarmac mileage. June to September is the season, since the Mongolian winter is among the coldest inhabited anywhere, and there is very little sealed road outside the capital to fall back on.