Mongolia by Mountain Bike

by Greg

I've been away from home for a couple weeks. To what completely justifiable purpose? To ride in an exotic and beautiful place. Mongolia is a mountain bike rider's dreamscape: world's least densely populated country, sweeping landscape, natural beauty, unending trails (though more doubletrack than singletrack) and very little pavement. There are also plentiful portions of history -- warrior horsemen who took over the world -- and an interesting culture -- an abiding nomadic herding tradition -- to add dimension to one's visit. There are also lots of yaks.

Traveling by bike is, as always, an excellent way to bare the senses to the experiences that surround travel. It was an amazing trip and we barely scratched the surface of what is possible to see and do there.

Our group rode and camped through the Khangai Mountains in the center of the country. As eluded to here, my dad was part of the group as were my old friend Grant and his father. Which made it into a family event as well. It is good to be back home to my regular family of Trina and the little dogs (who jumped all over me and dashed though the yard at high speed with the excitement of my return. Er, the dogs did.) But Mongolia is so vast and diverse that there remains a nagging itch to see more of it someday. Perhaps...

For now, I present these few images as an introduction to our small journey.