DH was convinced that no visit to Mongolia would be complete without at least a short gallop on a horse across the Steppes with a sword firmly clenched between her teeth. This put us clearly in the hoof-prints of Genghis Khan and his sturdy mount, Mutton (I'm just guessing at that, but given the God-like status mutton has as a food-group here, it would seem logical). The Mongolian steppe spreads out like an ocean of grassy plains from the orient to Europe and...

Now that DH had ticked off her bucket list item of watching Mongolian beefcakes in speedo's wrestling with each other it was time to address a couple of things I wanted to do. I'm a little further along the maturation cycle than DH so I wasn't looking for Mongolian women wrestling in speedo's (so it was indeed fortunate that it wasn't part of the Naadaam festival??) but I did want to venture into the legendary Gobi Desert and spend a night in...

Near the top of her list of favourite things to watch, DH includes flowing chocolate fountains, puppies playing, and Speedo-wearing beefcakes wrestling with one another. So to bring some special joy to her life we had made some advanced bookings to attend the Naadaam Festival in Mongolia which is centred around that countries national sport of wrestling. Apparently Naadaam means Three Manly Games or "the three games of men" (not wanting to be a wet blanket, I wa...

Mongolia, the world's second-largest landlocked country after Kazakhstan, has proven to be a very large jump-start to our travel batteries. As we've wandered aimlessly through Asia, we've been amazed by the kaleidoscope of spectacular experiences offered up by each area we've visited but at the same time there always seemed to be an underlying similarity- a common bond. Not so in Mongolia. The architecture, fashion of the day, landscape, and even ...