“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

The light is a dusty violet as we wait for the adult camels to return for milking. Three calves bray and froth at the mouth, impatient with just our hands to chew on. Rima, dressed in a blue overcoat over a floral red dress waits with us, eyes fixed on the horizon. The light turns to blue as the sun goes down. Finally our patient gaze is rewarded and we see the black heads nodding their way back home. Evening has dropped with the temperature. The town mosque begins its call to prayer. An undulating voice calling to Allah crackles over the loud speaker, merging with the cries of the camel calves, battling for attention These are healthy-looking beasts, with stiff upright humps and broad bellies. 12-year-old Shimbergen pulls the spindly legs of a white calf towards its mother to encourage her milk to flow. Then Rima starts, fast and furious in her milking that spurts rhythmically into the bucket balanced on her knee. Shimbergen drags the calf away, pure white milk splashed across its whiskered mouth, and Rima continues to milk. She expertly gets 4-8 litres out of one camel per day. These are hybrids, half Bactrian (two-humped), half Dromedary (one-humped) with a one-and-a-half hump as a result. Rima will milk them twice this evening, at 6pm and 8pm, allowing the calves to take whatever is left. On the ground piles of dried dung have been raked up for use as fuel. The fire burning now will heat water for the outdoor shower. Rima’s family home is made up of large square rooms, sparse furniture, but tens of Persian carpets on the floors and walls. At the outside white walls are fringed with blue, a seaside feel giving a note of the surreal in this desert brush land. The rural town of Tokabai is close to the Aral Sea, the infamous disaster of Soviet ideology. Today Aralsk city, what was once the booming centre of the fishing industry able to produce 20,000 tonnes of fish per year at its peak, has been reduced to a shell. Soviet mismanagement during the Virgin Lands programme rerouted the rivers feeding the inland sea to cotton production in the Steppe Lands. The Aral Sea reduced in size from the fourth largest inland sea to the ninth. More than that, its salinity levels exploded with no outlet for the water other than evaporation. Fish died, fishermen lost their jobs, families left. Tobakai is a case study of the effects, with 300 families reduced to 100, and those remaining relying on herding for subsistence living. After the evening prayer has been sung into darkness we sit down to eat around a low table. Plov, tomatoes, fresh bread torn and scattered over the table and lumps of boiled sugar and halva. Flowing throughout is Kazakh tea. Strong black tea from India is kept in one pot, hot water in another and camel’s milk in a bowl. Milk is spooned into a small drinking bowl, the tea added and finally a dash of hot water, presided over by Rima. The small bowls are filled to half way before being passed back piping hot. Bowls are passed back and forth over the table until the hot water is exhausted. A bowl filled half way with tea is a good sign. Although they refuse to acknowledge the practice, we have been told that the level of tea you receive corresponds to how much respect you have been accorded by the person serving the tea. A full cup may sate your thirst but it does not bode well for your reputation. The smaller your portion of tea, the more respect the person pouring has for you. After food we show our video of Mongolian curdmaking to the Nurlibayer family. Rima is excited by the images of camel alcohol being brewed and asks us to replay the part where the milk is boiled and the evaporated water collected in a pan. A budding entrepreneur, although we’re not sure if her excitement over alcohol is something we should be pleased with ourselves for.... Yedige plays the Dombra, a two-stringed, slim-necked guitar. His favourite compositions are fast and complex; music that speaks of the swan's flight and a song that gallops along to the beat of running horses. A horsewhip hangs above Yedige, against the carpeted wall and next to photographs of long gone family members around a central painting of his father, smooth brown lines against a light blue background. We peel away when sleep overcomes us and settle down under heavy blankets outside. Alicia is afraid of the cold, which will shiver into what was a 35-degree day. But the cold of tonight is nothing compared to the minus thirty of a Kazakh winter. I tuck myself away under the layers of thick wool, thrilled at the prospect of sleeping under the spray of stars above us and waking up to fresh desert air. Inside the compound we don’t feel the wind, and sleep as soundly as baby camels.

Rules of the road: Bring a translator with you. If you can't afford this, check the local internet cafe, a hub for people with global connections.

[caption id="attachment_289" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Bus to Toqabai"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_290" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Toqabai bus ride"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_291" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Shimbergen and his camel"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_292" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Evening milking"] [/caption]

“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck

Stepping onto a train with a ticket sounds to be the easiest thing in the world. We had a 33-hour train ride ahead of us and were collectively thrilled at the prospect. Cue Kazakhstan train authorities. Translating from train officials' sign language: "No you cannot get on the train as you don't have your passport" Us: "Our passports are with the Migration Police getting registered. The train station told us photocopies were sufficient" Train staff: "No....No....No....No" Five minutes and a lot of frustrated gesturing later Sebastian and Alicia run off to find someone higher up the train hierarchy. They find the station police. All seems to be going well until the officer indicates that something more than honey-sweet smiles are needed to process this transaction. Sebastian hands over 1,000 Tenge (around the going rate for bribes). Officer holds up his five-fingered hand, digits spread. The train edges forward, teasing us cruelly. Heart racing and with reluctance Sebastian hands over 5,000T - half the cost of a 33-hour ride for three people and the equivalent of US$35. Ouch. We're on the train. We made it. Wallets severely lightened, prides bruised, and faith in Kazakh authority depleted. 33 blissful hours later we arrive in south western city Aralsk. “Organic planning” has left us about as unprepared as you can be without turning up completely naked. It’s 3am and we are in a red velvet-lined bar with rowdy drunk Kazakhs, brutish women and short, hairy taxi drivers intent on touching Alicia’s hair and legs. We exit the bar and enter the station refectory, shifting position to the waiting hall and back to avoid various drunken advances. I cradle a lame kitten, feeding it tea-soaked bread and cheese. We read only now about the island in the Aral Sea used for biological warfare testing by the ever-cautious Soviets, who buried Ebola, Anthrax and TB in shoddy containers, now thought to be polluting the water. The water that we’re not supposed to drink. Who brought the water purifier? Oh, that’s right, the organic planner. There's no lack of people willing to talk to us, but our non-existent Russian soon sends them packing. The word for camel, which we diligently learned, is vierblut. So we can say camel. And "how much?": skolka, and "good" in Kazakh: yacksheh. It’s going to be a long night. At 8am Alicia calls a couple of taxi drivers recommended in our guide. Despite not finding an English speaker to answer the phone one man turns up greeting us, the only white people in the hall, with a “Salam Alikum” and packs us into his rusted Soviet-era motor to find a translator in this dusty town. With the heat, sandy streets and blue-and-white houses Aralsk reminds one of a seaside town. Set beside the depleted Aral Sea this is not entirely false, nor is it entirely truthful. Kazakhstan is furthest away from any of the world’s oceans, but the inland Aral Sea used to be the world’s fourth largest. It is now the ninth. The depletion has taken with it thousands of family’s livelihoods, with diversified lifestyles of fishing and herding reduced to herding alone, which cannot support everyone in the small village dotted around the sea. 'Hopeless' and 'grim forbearance' are words I had read about Aralsk and its 39,000 people. I feel none of this standing underneath the hot sun outside the yurt-shaped Olympic training centre. Aralsk looks to me more like small town America; an illusion shattered the moment mouths slide open to reveal a grin full of gold-plated teeth.

“Why do women wear gold teeth here?” “Older women's teeth have gone bad and so they replace them with gold teeth. It is beautiful to have gold teeth.” “Do younger girls wear gold teeth to be beautiful” “No, their teeth are not bad. It is beautiful only for the older women”

Gotcha. If only wrinkles and stretch marks could be beautiful, reserved “only for the older women” to wear. I like this Kazakh logic. Less logical is why the young girls of Aralsk seem to be wearing a French maid outfit complete with fishnets to school. (Is it a coincidence that I'm reading Lolita?) Incidentally I don't find anyone who can explain to me why the primary school children of this rural city are all wearing fetish outfits to school. I write now from Fariza’s house where negotiations for transport and accommodation with camel herders have been marred by Crisis Tourism. A taxi to the village closest to the ship cemetery will set you back 8,000 T. And to stay with the camel herders is not an act of traditional Kazakh hospitality, but another facet of the tourist industry, costing around 2,000 T per person per night. Ouch.

“We don’t stay in hotels”, we say. “That's an expensive taxi ride for us”, we implore.

It’s not washing. Why would it, for those who have suffered the destruction of a natural resource, which was just about the area’s only redeeming feature, at the hands of human stupidity. We may be dirty, smelly and living on a pittance, but it’s at least out of choice. Fariza is the only member of her family practicing Ramadan. She invites us to her house for the evening and Sunday’s celebration. We will be the first foreigners to see where she lives. We sense that this is less to do with the remoteness of Aralsk and more to do with her shame at its small size. At the market next to the main square things aren’t exactly bustling. The town’s produce reduced to the ubiquitous melon and, to our delight, a collection of wrinkly babushkas in bright clothes selling shubat, fermented camel’s milk. We sit on the ground amongst the chattering, bickering group, sharing snippets of our primitive Kazakh (yacksheh, rakhmid, mesileh yock) and the questions Fariza translated for us. We grow in confidence amongst the grins of shining gold and sun-browned skin. In a manner distinctive to themselves, men and women fly as quickly to anger as they do to laughter and don’t hesitate to flip between the two rapidly, reducing us all to nervous giggles. Suddenly we become aware of an extra team member. Alicia has broken a rule of the road: smiling at a lone male. He proceeds to follow us, speaking drunkenly in Kazakh and Russian, touching us where possible and refusing to respond to our “Ruski, niet” and more general "Go away now". What is this odd little town? An Olympic training centre inside a yurt? A history museum that requires a bribe to let you in?  Cafes that refuse to serve food at lunchtime? A theatre hall where the elderly turn up one day early for a show? Fetish outfits for school girls? That evening after supper Fariza cracks out the family photo albums with pictures mostly of herself. With each turn of the laminated page, our fingers sliding over creased edges, we slowly piece together Fariza’s life. Turns out she is quite the local celebrity. Tens of Farizas smile at us from underneath traditional furry hats, trussed up in ball gowns and glitter. Uh oh. In the morning Fariza breaks the news to us that she has to work (previously unmentioned), leaving us without a translator at the very moment we were supposed to leave for the market. She deigns, on her queenly power throne, to call the driver we said was too expensive, and organise a ride we say we cannot afford, with no translator to go with us. Back to square one, once again ad libbing, we retreat to the Internet café defeated and demoralised. We ask around coyly for a translator. Yedige listens in and offers his services, humbly saying that his English isn’t very good. He’s on holiday from work in Almaty. He’s also on Ramadan but agrees in his soft-spoken way to help us. En route to the market and our friendly babushkas Yedige tells us that his relatives, living just an hour away, own camels and make shubat to sell in the market. Bingo! They are happy for us to stay, with just the usual gifts of apples, plums and melons.

Rules of the road: Never smile at, or voluntarily talk to lone males - particularly those with dilated pupils, smelling like a vodka factory.

[caption id="attachment_285" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Notes on a train"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_286" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Shubat Factory Aralsk"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_287" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Kourt and Babushkas"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_288" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Fermented camel's milk"] [/caption]

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux

...The STANs - a collection of half Slavic, half Asian countries which appear on the political map to be eating each other. Each country curving round the other so that to cross from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan you have to transit Kazakhstan for an hour or so. There is something a little unnerving about being in a country where you resemble the people of neighbouring countries, particularly if those people speak a language you do not. Our group, now distilled to three, could all pass for Russians and we were in for a number of encounters with train officials who couldn't quite believe that NONE of us spoke Kazakh or Russian. Despite this, we turned up at the China Kazakh border bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, only to find it closed. For the next three days. No explanation given. Three days isn’t just a shortened holiday for us. It’s a cut schedule, countries sliced off the face of the documentary. It was time to regroup. Sitting next to a bowl of noodle soup in our favourite café we realised this was about the first time we’d been anywhere long enough to even have a favourite café. Shame there were no camels. [caption id="attachment_271" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Khorgas main street"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_272" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Khorgas street food"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_273" align="alignleft" width="100" caption="Chinese sleeper bus"] [/caption] Flooding in Pakistan meant we had lost one country. NGO workers killed in a ‘safe’ region of Afghanistan was another country gone. Even if we were game to risk our own necks, there was no justification for risking the poor sod’s who’d be sent to rescue us if we got into a sticky situation. To quote one wise friend: “maybe not for cheese”. Tajikistan was, after much tooing and froing, also struck off. Largely due to the fact that there are few or no camels there at all. Too many mountains, not enough flat land. But now we had a new problem: how to get to India from Kyrgyzstan. Flights being prohibitively expensive and the long way round overland being more than our lives were worth in visa costs. With south not an option, we decided to head north. First stop Kazakhstan, then south to Kyrgyzstan, west to Uzbekistan, maybe a cross-over into Turkmenistan and north to Russia. Oh how little we knew. If we thought Pakistan and Afghanistan would be a problem, say hello to revolution, elections, gender inequality, renewed religious vigour and paranoia of epic proportions. All with zero language skills - Ruski niet. In China we had Sebastian, warbling in pidgin Chinese equivalent to that of a toddler, but of enough robustness to get us through unscathed. In Mongolia no one expected you to speak Mongolian. Now we all pass for Russians, and there are expectations. Finally we pass over the border taking, a whole day, to reach Almaty, Kazakhstan. The city, laid out on a grid, has mountains to the south with roads sloping down as you head north. Easy to navigate? You’d have thought so, but with leafy, wide avenues masking stocky square buildings and any landmark they might provide. Niet problem. Just stick out a hand and a driver or unofficial taxi will stop and take you to your destination for a small fee. With relatively little time in the city first stop is the Kyrgyz embassy. If getting lost and speaking no Russian are just humps in the road, getting a Kyrgyzstan visa counts as trial number one. Women with children first means the queue doesn’t move for two hours. Now the consul is in a bad mood. In the queue we meet an English journalist who has just bribed the consul US$35 on top of the express visa price of US$95 to get out of Kazakhstan and into Kyrgyzstan. We agree to meet him later for a local beer. Nothing can soften the consul, so US$95 and a three-day wait it is. No time now for filming - visas are key. Time and cash limits will be stretched by the Stans and Almaty is proving to be an expensive place to live. With no reliable public transport, the only option is an unofficial taxi or stranger travelling in the same direction as you are. Most of these strangers charge, but sometimes an English-speaker is curious enough to stop and use the transit time to ask a few questions, not charging at the end of the ride. Later that evening we meet David, a mix of scruffy George Clooney (think Oh Brother Where Art Thou) and Robert Downey Junior’s mannerisms, including a capacity for vodka that even our Swedish Absolute representative cannot match. David takes us to a restaurant closely resembling an art deco cinema with a penchant for the dramatic ceilings. It’s late and the Shashlik is off, but the herring, beer, cheese and vodka are eternal. Journalist David enjoys our esoteric tale of camels and cheese. He wants to write a story about us. In fact he may do more than that, writing, as he is, a book about ethnic minorities in China. Working undercover he couldn’t say much at the Kyrgyz embassy, but now, tongue loosened by a few shots, he speaks of this travel, agent and publisher: the same as William Dalrymple. I’m pleased to see that we agree on the fundamental arrogance of Paul Theroux’s writing. But as he tells us we may play a part in his book I wonder if it will be a Paul Theroux 2.0, tearing to shreds innocents met on trains and at borders. I hope we’ve made a good impression. It can’t be too bad, as the next morning David has referred the BBC correspondent to us quoting Alicia’s now infamous “Camel milk is the new oil”....

Rules of the road: Call the embassy for up-to-date, on-the-ground information. Books are a year out-of-date by the time they are printed and embassies show you what you want to see online, which is often not the reality.

[caption id="attachment_274" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Working hard in Almaty"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_275" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Cheese at the Green Market"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_276" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Green Market cheesemongers"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_277" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Working out the route"] [/caption] Big thanks goes to Marc Bassot at Check Point Central Asia for providing office space and support in Almaty. We couldn't have done it without you and the wonderful Anel. Many thanks and hope to see you again soon.

We meet Badarch Puntsag, famous Mongolian poet, outside of the city centre, close to a nice-looking ger of his choice. The ger’s owner is a man from Hovd, in the far west of Mongolia, a place famous for its throat singers. Sitting down slowly, the 72-year-old veteran poet orders us all a bowl of fermented mare’s milk. We stop organising the equipment immediately to join him and drink. Dressed in a moss green deel, impressive silver and leather belt securing it in place, with curled pointed shoes poking out of the bottom, Badarch bites on his pipe and begins…

“5,000 years ago we started to use the camel. The legend says that the camel evolved from the rabbit. Even now, if you look at a rabbit and a camel, the similar thing is the mouth, the slit that separates the upper lips. I talk about this in my poem. The important thing about the camel is to move, especially in the desert landscape. Nomads usually move twice in the summer, autumn and spring and in the winter, once. Every family used one to three camels to travel to Ulaan Baatar, taking between 40 and 50 days, or 20km per day on a camel. The camel is a safe transport and until 1950 it was the only way of getting between the countryside and the city. The camel is a clean animal. It doesn’t eat much grass, only special grasses that grow in warm places. Twenty to forty litres a day the camel can drink, and then go 7-10 days without drinking. Our Mongolian Bactrian camel has two humps and lots of fat. They are very sensitive creatures. Sometimes mothers don’t recognise their calves, so the herder will bring a horsehair fiddle and sing to them to make the camel cry.”

Our translator Zaya tells us in whispered awe that she had to memorise Camel in school. To her Badarch is a big celebrity. His reading, accompanied by sweeping hand gestures transforms the guttural Mongolian language into a melodious, undulating sound. Badarch barely glances at the book, his first of three written since 1987, speaking from memory a poem he wrote 22 years ago. A family enters the ger-cum-café and orders fermented mare’s milk while Badarch continues to speak. This young family is beautiful and fashionable, the woman in high heels, the man with slicked back hair and sunglasses. Their young child sits quietly, her pretty round face and large eyes listening attentively as the lined face, perhaps 70 years her senior, continues to speak and sing into our camera. First published in 1962, his 1987 poem Camel won the Bolortsom prize the same year.

“It didn’t win because it was good,” Badarch tells us, “It won because it was about the camel.”

He is modest. Thousands of odes to camels have been written over the centuries in Mongolia.

“My emotion is to write poems. Mongolians are good poets; when they talk they use poetry. Even when they play ankle bone games or speak at weddings the language is full of poetry. Now I am writing operas. Opera is developing in Mongolia more than other Asian countries. My inspiration for the camel came from my childhood. Until I was 15 I lived in the countryside and looked after camels. In the morning I took my camels into the wild landscape to feed and drink in the salt lakes. While they ate I would sit and read books. In the summer and autumn it is hard to look after camels because it is windy and camels usually follow the wind. I never even had time to drink tea. If I drank tea the camels would follow the wind. In spring camels have calves and the female usually hide from the male and also from people too. We call this action Shilrene.”

Finally we ask Badarch whether he likes the camel milk products.

“I love every dairy product. When I taste camel ‘cheese’ it makes my mouth water. It tastes like fruits that are not ready to eat”

Walking out of the ger, Badarch hands us signed name cards that we will treasure. Camel herder to poet. One last photo is taken outside before he crossed the busy street and raises his arm to flag down a taxi. We finish our mare’s milk sitting in silence, taking in the wealth of words, experience and respect for the camel we have just been a part of. www.bethecheese.org

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

And so stepping off our 16-hour bumpy bus-ride over dirt desert roads, stretching aching limbs and bruised muscles, we walk gratefully into an early morning Dalazadgad, capital of the South Gobi province Omnogov. Practically a ghost town at this time in the morning - Mongolians also happen to be notorious for enjoying a lie-in. Two in the team catch up on sleep whilst two more dash to Mercy Corps whom we had heard were helping a small cheesemaker set up her business. Mercy Corps lead us to Sainaa, bright-eyed camel-milk advocate whose blossoming business was destroyed by last year's severe winter and drought. Sainaa is starting again with a new factory, but until that opens at the end of October 2010, she sells products direct from the nomadic herders. It is to these friends and colleagues that she invites us to spend the night. Grandmother and grandfather, Ogod and Tsedenkhuu (try saying that with a mouthful of camel cheese) head the family and camel herd. Their heavily pregnant daughter, Tuvshintungalag, is the main milkmaid, accompanied by whirling dervishes of daughters and cousins. Altogether, a family of eight live in the ger with one more on the way. Still, they welcome all seven of us: the WYTSL team, Turuu our translator, Sainaa and her grandson. [caption id="attachment_232" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Gobi family"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_233" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Camel milk curd"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_234" align="alignleft" width="150" caption=""Cheese" drying on ger"] [/caption] Initiation into family life begins with a cup of fermented camel's milk. This tastes like tangy yogurt, only sourer with camely undertones. This is the drink of choice, fermenting in order to prolong the life of raw camel milk, and creating an extremely healthy set of probiotics. It's not long before we are alongside the camels. A smelly bunch of creatures, recently shaved of their impressive wool. I grab a teat or two, always on the left side of the camel, stand on one leg with a bucket on my leg and pull. Nothing. Next camel.....Nothing. I begin to doubt my ability as a Mongolian milkmaid. Third camel lucky - or so the saying goes - and it's spurts away! Something else is spurts away for the camel too - and a fresh spatter of camel pooh is whipped by the delightful desert winds directly onto my leg. Apparently a sign of good luck...I beg to differ... We take the fresher than fresh milk back to the ger and watch it get boiled up in a mobile oven to make Arul, a cottage cheese-like product. At the same time, from the same camel milk, alcohol is concocted. This happens twice a day. We try three stages of the drying process - a soft cream cheese, a semi-dried curd and  a fully dried curd that you gnaw. It's no wonder these Mongolians have such pearly whites. Freshly brewed alcohol is handed around. 18 percent proof but tasting of slightly milky water, this stuff is insidious. Turuu, our translator, testifies to this, telling us that we may not taste the alcohol, nor even feel it, but step outside the ger, feel the wind hit you in the face and THEN you'll feel it. As evening approaches we are offered camel meat boats, dumplings stuffed with a finely chopped mixture of meat and vegetables, followed by camel milk tea and finally, warm fresh camel's milk to aid digestion and help us sleep. In the soft lighting of the cosy ger this doesn't prove a problem. Fourteen of us lay down our heads for the night, arranging our bodies with feet pointing towards the door. Water has been conspicuously absent today for all but the camels. A highly prized commodity in the desert where they get just 150-300 millimetres of precipitation per year, water is saved for the most important members of the family, the camels. And these are fussy animals - camels won't drink warm water, as it doesn't quench their thirst. Instead they get gallons of cool water from wells every day. Their human herders stay hydrated by drinking the camel's milk, a substance that has water retaining properties gained directly from the desert-adapted plants the camels eat. The next day at 12 it is time for us to leave. We see the morning milking and watering of the female camels and calves, drink another few cups of fermented milk, plus one last one for the journey back to Dalanzadgad, and wave goodbye to our ruddy-cheeked hosts. We've eaten more dairy products in these last 24 hours than most of us have consumed in the last year. We are happy.

Rules of the road: Eat whatever is given to you. Failing that, pretend you're Buddhist.

[caption id="attachment_228" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="South Gobi Ger"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_229" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Milking camels"] [/caption] [caption id="attachment_230" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Camel milk"] [/caption]

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” - Mark Twain

The What Took You So Long Team are travelling the world in search of camel cheese. This blog reports from Mongolia... Chinggis Khaan, the Mongolian name for who we call Gengis Khan, symbol of the steppe land, is not to be taken lightly. Mongolians reflect their heritage. Tough people, big drinkers and no word for ‘please’ (with desert heat in summer, -40 in winter there’s little time for pleasantries). Tall and broad, Mongolians differ in physical stature from the majority of Asian peoples, resembling the wrestlers of their national sport. Women are strikingly beautiful, although one swift powerful elbow in the ribs if you get in the way reminds one that they too are not to be messed with. None of this makes the Mongolians rude or unfriendly. Break the Siberian ice with a cup of camel or mare's milk or a few shots of vodka and you'll be fine. Just make sure you stick to a few rules...

if you touch someone's foot by accident you must shake their hand or never be friends again

never fall asleep on your host's bed unless invited (try keeping this rule in a warm homely ger)

never lean on the side of a ger and when falling asleep make sure your feet point towards the door

as soon as milk tea is served you must stop whatever you'd doing and sit down to accept it

when taking or receiving anything use your right hand and touch your right elbow with your left hand

We were all raised eyebrows and blushing sandals when we hit Ulaan Baatar (UB to the locals). Prepared for a country far, far away, we weren't prepared for high fashion and hip hop. A full day’s train ride from neighbouring civilisation we may be, but the effortless cool of Brooklyn is replicated amongst the broken pavements, street-side gers and empty Soviet buildings. 70 percent of the Mongolian population are under 35 and this prolific youth devote time, energy and money to the top fashions and the latest popular music. For a country of only three million people, the number of decent music groups here is impressive. I suppose you have to have something to do in the long winter months…. Older generations still wear the traditional dress – the deel, an ankle-length coat with an oriental collar, trussed up with a bus, a leather or fabric belt. Mongol gutal, leather shoes, pointed and curled up at the ends protrude from underneath, and the ensemble is topped off with a maglai, a trilby-like hat. Our introduction to the capital UB is brief. All too soon we are leaving the comforts of the city to explore the South Gobi desert on our search for camels and cheese.....

Rules of the road: Dress as the locals do: if they value smartness, make an effort to spruce your travel worn attire.