After leaving Ulaanbaatar, the ‘Mongol Connections’ group travelled in a great loop around Mongolia, at first going west to Karakorum, then south into the Gobi and then east and north again back to the capital region. Outside the city, there were a few towns and villages with temples, but more often we passed through grasslands interspersed with hills and then Gobi semi-desert and sands and the stunningly beautiful canyons of the north Gobi at Baga Gazriin Chuluu. One wonderful thing sustained us as a group all through this relentless travel: having our own chef and his team. Despite his constantly having to rush ahead to set up our picnics under awnings on the steppe, by the Orkhon River or in the lee of hills, and our dinners and breakfasts in tents, his repertoire and the quality of the food was truly splendid. I for one garnered some sense of how the nomad royalty of old used to travel.
