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| Gobi Desert Off-Road Motorcycle Tour |
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Gobi Desert Off-Road Motorcycle Tour 8th - 17th June 2009
The Gobi Desert straddling the border between Mongolia and China, is a wild and dramatic place, entirely suitable for motorcycling. We ride on all sorts of roads: asphalt as well as packed mud or gravel tracks with washouts and potholes. All pretty much free of traffic & through some spectacular scenery. |
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More information: |
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Look at some of our photos of this tour. We've got several
pictures of the area around your trip. Click on the camera |
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The famous Gobi Desert is not all vast flat steppe under a deep blue sky. There are bizarre rock formations, canyons, the Gurvansaikhan mountain range and sand dunes 100km long, as well as forests of small saxaul trees and other desert vegetation. Apart from a few villages and small towns that we pass through on the way, most of the population have a nomadic lifestyle, frequently moving with their round white felt yurts (“gers”) and herds of camels, goats and horses. This trip is a fascinating cultural experience as well as an off-road bike tour across Mongolia of over one and a 1500km's.
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Day By Day Itinerary: |
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Day 1 Arrive
Ulaanbaatar and transfer to hotel. Evening meet crew and allocate motorbikes.
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Day 2 Make an early start to get out of Ulaanbaatar city and onto the road leading south to the Gobi. Ride on to Baga Gazriin Chuluu, a mountain of unusual granite rocks which are home to ibex, marmots, steppe fox and plenty of birds of prey. Overnight ger camp.
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Day 3 Ride through Mandalgov, and continue across the
open steppe of Middle Gobi to Tsagaan Suvraga, an amazing series of cliffs, white and pink limestone rock formations taking the appearance of stalagmites up to 30 meters high. It is an excellent site for some out-of-the-ordinary photography. Overnight ger camp.
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Day 4 The track to Dalanzadgad has little traffic, even
though we are travelling on the main road. This is Mongolia as one imagines it – distant horizons, dry rocky earth and a huge blue sky. The town appears like a mirage and it takes nearly two hours of riding to reach it after seeing it from afar. Overnight ger camp.
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Day 5 Ride up into the mountains of the Gobi Gurvansaikhan Uul. This
national park is so unexpected in the middle of the desert and it is a delight to feel so cool in the deep canyon where sunlight reaches for only a few minutes each day. After walking into Yolyn Am (the “Vulcher’s Mouth”) we ride westwards at the foot of the mountains to Khongoryn Els where huge sand dunes meet the end of the Altai mountain range. Overnight ger camp.
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Day 6 Leaving the golden dunes behind us we ride through a wonderful mountain pass and on to
Bulgan village. Not far from here is Bayanzag, a forest of rare saxaul trees and the “flaming cliffs” where many dinosaur remains have been found and Roy Chapman Andrews discovered the first dinosaur eggs during his expedition of the 1920s. Overnight ger camp.
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Day 7 Today we travel north-east to Mandal-Ovoo and then to Saikhan-Ovoo. Here, on a bend in the Ongi river, are the remains of two monasteries, one on each bank of the river. Overnight ger camp.
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Day 8 Continue northwards to reach Zorgol Khairkhan, a dramatic granite
mountain with bizarre rock formations jutting out against the skyline. Overnight hotel.
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Day 9 As we return to Ulaanbaatar, the landscape becomes gradually greener and more mountainous. Even close to the city people still live the traditional lifestyle, there are more horses and less camels than we encountered in the Gobi. Overnight hotel.
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Day 10 Transfer to airport for departure. |
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Price per person: Euro €2895
fuel & motorbike hire included in price
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Bayankhongor
Province is a plateau crossed by three mountain belts:
the Gobi-Altai, the Khangai and the Tsagaan Bogd
mountains. In the south lies the Great Gobi Reserve,
habitat of rare species such as snow leopard, wild
camel and the Gobi bear.
This
health spa in the mountains contains 300
natural springs with water ranging from icy cold to boiling
hot. Mongolians come to bathe in the hot waters which
are good for skin complaints and rheumatic disorders. 
This Buddhist monastery was founded in the sixteenth century to house some thanka paintings which had been given to Mongolia's Avdai Khan by the Dalai Lama of Tibet. In its heyday there were more than 100 temples here built in Mongolian, Chinese and Tibetan style. 
