Reflections

Everyone is heading home … the adventure is over. Compass advertise adventure expeditions and Mongolia certainly delivered.

We had it all – torrential rain, stunning views, a great crew and team, a few too many accidents, great roads and way too many bike problems. Overall fantastic riding.

It is a team effort and unfortunately not all our team made it, so it is a little hard to be too excited about our success. It is all great fun – but it only takes a moment to turn bad.

I didn’t expect to see afternoon tropical storms and downpours like we did and I didn’t expect to see so much smoke from the massive fires in Siberia.

The biggest frustration was the quality and condition of the bikes. I know compass is hamstrung by the local supplier, and I know the crew worked hard to try and get the bikes prepared, but we had way too many problems and significant safety issues.

When we met the bikes Rodger checked the tires. One of the BMW that was to be carrying a pillion had 4psi in the rear tyre – straight from the workshop. It is clear basically nothing was done to prepare the bikes for our 2 week tour. I lost count of how many hours we lost due to bike problems and often delaying us creating more challenges.

While all the days intended to be in camp well before sunset – there is always a risk things don’t go to plan. On our Day 3 we had a number of bikes riding in the dark and in the rain with no headlights.

As I said previously – the only saviour was the ability of the support crew to keep them moving.

Mongolia is stunning; you can’t describe the grandeur of the scenery. The locals are also fantastic, always with smiles and waves. A few times the police wandered over – just to have their photo taken with us. I think riding a motorbike is probably the best way to see the place – you can cover the distances, manage the often-bad roads and take in the vista. We saw tourists both on the Chinese 150cc bikes and on Royal Enfield with side cars – both seem like really hard work to me. While Karen and Lucille had a great time in the UN Nissan with Ellis it must have been pretty bumpy at times. We saw some push-bike riders – I can’t imagine anything worse. It is just too far between anything – and riding on those roads with trucks and animals would not be fun.

But mainly it was about the riding; open free riding, dirt tracks winding forever along valleys, multilane roads – that are just parallel tracks through the grass. I would prefer more dirt and less bitumen, but it is a big country and you must cover the miles sometimes.

Justin was a great leader, calmly managing us through the challenges and guiding us through the landscape. Ellis was always there behind us with the UN Nissan when needed, with lots of snacks and keeping us moving.

The drone (DJI Mavic Air by the way) has been good fun and a great way to try and capture some of the scale of the landscape. Managing and preparing video is hard work but I think the results are worth it. I will do more editing and get more decent quality video up to YouTube soon I hope.

The biggest question now is: what next?