Desert Pains

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The Gobi Challenge is a small, expedition-style stage race that winds its way through 225 kilometres of Mongolia's ruthless south Gobi desert. The race is organised by two brutish Scottish blokes, both former police men, one of whom served in the Special Forces. They know how to run a well-organised, efficient event, but suffice it to say you don't want to get on their bad side...just ask the two token Mongolian runners who brought along a masseuse,or the photographer who showed up in a dress....
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Warmth on the Steppes

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A CROWD of spectators has gathered, waiting as Tom, one of the few foreigners to brave driving in Mongolia, prepares to make his move. It’s been 40 minutes of psyching up and watching nearly every vehicle, from logging trucks to motorbikes, stall and get stuck in a fast-flowing tributary of the Selenge River in north-west Mongolia. A superhero Landcruiser is on standby rescuing the less fortunate – or less capable – vehicles with a winch. But that’s not going to be us: Tom’s pride couldn’t bear it....
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So this is India?

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I’m cramped in the back seat of a Jeep—not to be confused with a four wheel drive— silly me for assuming. We’re heading up, up, up through one of the world’s starkest, steepest, most stunning places that is still accessible by car—if only barely. We are entering the Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh on the Indian side of the Himalayas, on the border of Tibet. This is far away from the hoohaa of Nepal and even farther from the hot and crowded urban India we’ve just escaped from. The mustached and turbaned, silk sareed India of postcard recollection is several hundred kilometers south of here.
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