The wine/port/vodka-fest on the train to Ulaanbaatar didn't seem like such a good idea the next day when I had a 300km drive into the countryside, most of it off-road...

I was staying with a nomad family for three days - Shiidere and Oydau. Shiidere's brother and his wife lived in the tent next door and there were lots of children running around the place. I lived in one of their 'ger' tents - a round wooden structure with a stove in the centre, covered in felt on the outside with one brightly decorated room inside that they use for eating and sleeping; there's a separate small kitchen ger and for the toilet they just walk away as far as they feel comfortable and squat in the desert (to be honest, it's a vast improvement on some of the toilets I've seen in the last few weeks!). The family don't stick to all the traditional customs and their ger is more modern than I had expected (I guess because they have an extra income from tourists coming to stay with them) - they have solar panels to generate electricity so they have a black and white TV that they all gather around to watch sumo wrestling. They have lots of horses but they often use motorbikes for getting around instead.

The area is 'semi-desert', it's sandy but there are some grass and plants growing there. The family keep sheep and goats; in the mornings they herd them to a stream about half an hour away where there's grass for them to eat, then in the afternoon they herd them back towards the ger. My guide/translator, Baagii, and I walked down to the stream in the afternoon and helped herd the animals back. Shiidere went off to pick up his father on his motorbike, leaving us with his 10-year-old nephew, Ishka, who was on a horse, holding two other horses on ropes and herding the animals while the wind was whipping the sand all up in his face - I felt sorry for him, it wasn't easy! It was a bit like being in a Wild West movie - the kid on horseback herding the animals through the desert with the sun blazing down and an eagle circling overhead.

Baagii and I went for a walk in the hills and saw the other side of the mountain where the family move their gers to during the three hottest months of summer. Later we made booz (steamed dumplings filled with meat and vegetables) for lunch; after a while I got the hang of folding up the dough into a pretty little parcel - I'll have to try to make them when I get home!

On my second evening three more tourists arrived who had also come across Russia on the Trans-Siberian railway - Pav and Mel from London, who are taking nine months off work and travelling a similar route to me as far as Indonesia and then going to Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Easter Islands and South America; and Tom from London who has four months off between jobs and is going on to China, Japan, Fiji (to do a research project on the coral) and North America. We had dinner together and then played games with sheep's ankle bones.

The next day we drove to Harhorin in the Ovorkhangai Province to the Erdene Zuu Buddhist monastery. The journey felt a bit like a safari - we were stopping every five minutes to take photos of eagles, cranes and camels by the roadside. On the way back the weather turned nasty and we saw lots of small sandstorms.

When we arrived back at the nomads' camp Shiidere and his brothers had gathered the horses in the wooden pen next to the gers - they were performing some rudimentary horse denistry with a hammer and chisel and also cutting the horses manes (apparently so they don't get too hot in summer - they keep the hair and use it to make ropes). The most difficult part of this operation seemed to be lassooing the horses in the first place and pinning them down to the ground. The children have no fear of the horses and the four-year old was riding around on his own.

Later we went to collect baskets of dried dung around the desert - this is what they use as fuel in the stoves. We also had a go at milking the goats and tried on the traditional Mongolian costumes.

It was a fantastic experience to learn about such a different lifestyle. It's hard to imagine being so isolated your whole life, rarely meeting other people - no shops or places to go for entertainment. But these nomadic people are all so happy and smiley - it makes me wonder whether they have the right idea! I think the women get a bit of a raw deal though - cooking, cleaning and collecting dung while the guys sail around on their motorbikes and horses and tend to the animals!