Leaving Eastern Siberia behind us, we once again boarded the train for the middle leg of the railway trip, and two nights on the train again until our next destination: Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia. I remember as a child thinking that these magical-sounding places - Outer Mongolia, Timbuktu, Outer Hebrides etc - were just fictional names made up to express somewhere exceptionally remote - luckily by the time we came to plan this trip my geographical knowledge was a bit better, but Mongolia still conjured up a certain mythical image, of remote and vast expanses of nothingness…and so it was with huge curiosity that we watched our approach to Mongolia and Ulan Bator from the train, which indeed hinted at great expanses of this nothingness, and then UB (as the capital is commonly known) slowly builds up in front of you, with the first sight of little villages, then larger industrial looking areas until suddenly UB is upon you, looking like an Asian Las Vegas with mountains and desert-landscape surrounding a very Western-looking city with high-rise buildings glinting in the sunshine.

We spent just the one night here, with the sole purpose of arranging a 5-night trip in to the Gobi desert, which we duly did and the next day we set off, boarding a 2-hour flight to the Southern Gobi region to meet our guide and driver of a trusty 4x4 Land Cruiser, with whom we would spend the next 6 days travelling through the desert with. For the fact and figure lovers (Dad) here are a couple to put it all in to context: the Gobi is the fifth-largest desert in the world, and Asia's largest (almost 1.3million km2). Most of the Gobi Desert is not sandy but made up of several different ecological and geographic regions based on different climate and topography.

The majority of the landscape we saw though was 'steppe' (semi-arid grassland) - and just miles, and miles and miles of it, interspersed with random geographical anomalies like the biggest sand dunes I have ever seen to snow-covered mountains. I really don't think I can do the breath-taking scenery justice, and I think our photos offer the best description, but the most impressive element of the Gobi is just its vastness: we travelled for 100s of kms each day, sometimes only passing a lone yurt or two, a nomadic herdsman and his horses, a group of shaggy camels, and at most a little village….and then just miles of rolling, silent land as far as the eye can see. This is 'big sky' country if I ever saw it - and I think that is where the real beauty comes from, as you don't actually see many 'sights', but it is the vastness, the remoteness, the "totally away from it all" that most impresses on one, and I think this is what we both loved most about it - you feel so far removed from anything you are used to, and in a way is a very cleansing experience!

Part of the fun and the magic was sleeping in yurts in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and meeting nomadic families and seeing how they live - a harsh life with little luxuries, but again there is something very 'decluttering' about the simplicity of their lives - that's not to say it is easy, as they rely heavily on their livestock to survive, who in turn are at the mercy of the harsh Gobi climate. A couple of nights we slept in our own yurt next door to that of the nomadic family hosting us - which felt very luxurious, particularly compared to the nights when we shared yurt floor space with the family, and our guide, and where a toilet is not deemed a household necessity (long-drops being a tourist luxury) so a nearby rock or shrub becomes your 'bathroom'. However we loved the fact that even with the most basic of yurts, there is always a motorbike parked outside each one, ready for the man of the household to jump on at a moment's notice, to drive to a neighbouring yurt settlement, or search for an errant horse / camel / goat. And many of the yurts are solar-powered so just as when you are enjoying the peace and quiet a mobile phone goes off, and with one family we enjoyed the Mongolian version of 'Beadle's About' on their black & white TV.

In between meals (surprisingly decent and varied breakfasts; noodle/pasta with some sort of tinned/dried meat for lunch; dinner - similar to lunch and invariably with large portions of - sometimes dried - camel meat….sorry Alice) we either explored the local terrain on foot (or on the shaggy, two-humped Bactrian camel) or drove to one of the sights: Vulture's Canyon (with 'eternal' - year-round - ice…but no vultures), national parks and sacred mountains, Flaming Cliffs (rust-coloured canyon where the first dinosaur eggs were discovered in 1922). Dotted along the sweeping landscapes was evidence of the Mongolian nomads' shamanic beliefs, as we would come across little piles of stones ('ovoos') built to honour the earth spirits, and decorated with blue scarves (representing the sky) and notes of money (to hope for a good journey home). We duly paid our respects and made it safely "home" to Ulan Batur on the 6th day.

I think, for both of us, this experience was the highlight of our trip so far - from the sheer childish joy of running down 400m of sand dunes, to experiencing a tiny glimpse of life which is just so different to our own - and something we won't forget in a hurry!

Even our return to UB came as a bit of a shock (traffic, noise, pollution) and luckily we had 3 nights (one in UB and two back on the train) to acclimatise before we hit the clamour of Beijing, and where our Trans-Mongolian railway adventure ended. We felt strangely sad leaving the last leg of the train trip behind, but so lucky to have experienced it - seeing the changing scenery slip by as you travel from Europe to Asia is a fantastic way to travel, and the distance you have travelled doesn't really hit you until you look at it on a map and then compare the changing scenery: endless Russian space and farmland, silver birch forests and wooden houses of Siberia, then hitting the desert region of central Asia and the Gobi, and then finally entering China via beautiful mountains and gorges outside of Beijing.

I will leave our first week in China and in Beijing for another time!