They say you should not do unaccompanied road trips in Mongolia. The weather is unpredictable and the distances enormous. There is no internet reception in most of the country. There are not even roads in many places, so you have to navigate by GPS. Towns are far apart, so if you break down it can take days before another vehicle shows up, if at all. So, perfect really.
We rented an old Toyota Land Cruiser with 250,000 miles on the clock from a Frenchman we found on the internet. Having downloaded maps.me for Mongolia and acquired a basic handheld GPS, we stocked up on food and water. We also made preliminary bookings at some strategically located gers along the route. Then we set out from Ulaanbaatar on 28 May 2018.
The two-week journey took us through deserts and forests, across plains and into hill-country, through rivers and along the shores of vast lakes. We encountered sandstorms and snowstorms, heat and cold, thunder and sparkling sunshine. Four seasons every day. And every second of every day the sheer vastness of land and sky.
For someone, who has seen much of the world, the gaps between surprises can seem longer and longer. However, Mongolia made me feel like a travel-virgin all over again! The enormity and stunning beauty of this wild and challenging land was like nothing I had ever seen before. Or since.
Even now, five years later, I often think back on the Mongolia road trip with amazement and very great fondness. I sometimes wonder how we did it. The pictures posted here are snapshots from trip, but they can never do justice to the full richness of the Mongolian experience. The only way to get that is to go yourself! The route map at the bottom of this page is a good starting point!
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