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On location, hunting for dinosaurs! While waiting for a massive Sauropod to wander across the barren...
Destinations > Mongolian G4 Recce
Mongolian G4 Recce
Then there's the mountain biking, and Mongolia certainly has some hills for that. On my ride we cruised an easy 15km or so away from camp down hill, and could at all times look back and see the tents. But my favourite was the kite-powered buggy, which really makes kite flying interesting. I loved the way we'd be driving top 4WDs across pretty-as-a-picture terrain, and then we'd stop, pull the toys out and have a crack at those too just for fun. Could it get any better? Well, when the others were driving the Freebies and Discos I would jump in a support Defender and drive that. Once I chose the tucker truck and while marvelling at yet another vista, John, the chef, whipped out some gourmet snacks and we munched on those while discussing the meaning of a Real Car. Yep, it did get better (for the record, Defenders and Porsche 911s are Real Cars).
Of course, the recce isn't a holiday. We were largely exploring as we travelled, and using the gear to test suitability of the locations. Another factor was access for the large G4 contingent, and always a thought about the effect on the environment. There will be a lot of people in a fragile environment, so it's good to see Land Rover are very careful to observe the Tread Lightly principles.
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Yep, no short walks with a long shovel on this trip, absolutely everything is carried out and absolutely no off-track driving permitted bar the dunes. Continuing with the environment theme, the competition is carbon-offset; the UK-produced cars are already for the first 74000km, and they calculate the rest of the impact. Offsetting means funding renewable energy projects and the like to equalise the carbon emissions of whatever you're offsetting. Read more at http://www.climatecare.org/
Carbon offsets will however be the furthest thing from the minds of the major beneficiaries of the G4 Challenge, and that's the people the International Red Cross support in Mongolia. In the last eight years Mongolia has had some harsh winters - and we're talking harsh by their standards, down to -50 or so - and that wiped out many herds. So the nomadic herdsmen migrated to the capital, Ulaanbaatar, to try to find work. Difficult in a country where people are only employed if they can afford to put right wrongs like broken dishes and so forth. You can imagine the problems a former mechanic for the Soviets had with finding a job. Mongolia is scenery-rich but cash-poor, and that's evident everywhere you look.
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Of course, the recce isn't a holiday. We were largely exploring as we travelled, and using the gear to test suitability of the locations. Another factor was access for the large G4 contingent, and always a thought about the effect on the environment. There will be a lot of people in a fragile environment, so it's good to see Land Rover are very careful to observe the Tread Lightly principles.
read on below advertisement
Yep, no short walks with a long shovel on this trip, absolutely everything is carried out and absolutely no off-track driving permitted bar the dunes. Continuing with the environment theme, the competition is carbon-offset; the UK-produced cars are already for the first 74000km, and they calculate the rest of the impact. Offsetting means funding renewable energy projects and the like to equalise the carbon emissions of whatever you're offsetting. Read more at http://www.climatecare.org/
Carbon offsets will however be the furthest thing from the minds of the major beneficiaries of the G4 Challenge, and that's the people the International Red Cross support in Mongolia. In the last eight years Mongolia has had some harsh winters - and we're talking harsh by their standards, down to -50 or so - and that wiped out many herds. So the nomadic herdsmen migrated to the capital, Ulaanbaatar, to try to find work. Difficult in a country where people are only employed if they can afford to put right wrongs like broken dishes and so forth. You can imagine the problems a former mechanic for the Soviets had with finding a job. Mongolia is scenery-rich but cash-poor, and that's evident everywhere you look.
next page »
