No. We will be in the Gorkhi-Terelj National Park and or the Khan Khentii Special Protected Area traveling everyday with horses and mostly camping with tents along the way. These are natural areas with little in the way of man-made infrastructure to access internet or phone service.

We do carry a satellite phone for emergency purposes and do not use this for social or business calls.

On the Gobi Tours, there are times when mobile phone access is available as we travel.

There is no access to electricity while on the horse trips. We recommend bringing extra batteries for cameras, or a battery pack or two that can charge a phone several times. There are also solar charges now that can charge batteries fairly effectively during the daylight hours.

On the Gobi Tours, there is opportunity to charge phones via the vehicle through it charging system. Bring your own cable and cigarette outlet charger for your phone for this.

We carry a camp shower which can be set up at the camp site, providing opportunity for a quick warm shower in privacy, enough to wash body and hair and feel refreshed.

As we require access to water for the horses and for our own cooking and cleaning needs while camping, we will always be near water. Often we are next to a river, sometimes a lake, and at least a creek.

So there is opportunity to dip and bath, sometimes swim. We ask however, that only biodegradable soaps and detergents are used, and provide water containers for washing/laundry, to use some distance away from open water.

On Gobi tours, showers are available in most ger camps, and we can arrange for a simple washing facility in privacy.

Toilet facilities while traveling in the national park and wilderness are “natural” and discreet. We use the natural area and in a specific way. We provide a hygiene pack with toilet paper, wet wipes, sanitary gel hand cleaner and a lighter for everyone on the trip. We’ll give a short explanation as to how to “go” the natural way. As a preliminary, it would be useful to read the book “How to shit in the woods” by Kathleen Meyer. It’s a humorous but fact filled read that will make your time in the woods more enjoyable.

Toilet facilities on the Gobi Tours are similar.

Yes, tips for the staff of guides, horsemen, and drivers who work with us are much appreciated. They are very hard working people as you will see and they have no problem accepting a tip if you choose to do so. We recommend $5.00 per day for each of them for the trips you are on. However, it is up to you what amount you give and if you feel the service was worth it, feel free to give more than the $5.00 per day.

Our riding times and distance each day depend on the terrain that we travel, but generally about 6 hours a day in the saddle and between 20 and 40+ kms. We break this up with lunch and personal stops along the way. Mountain passes, rivers and rough ground may determine the distance on a particular day, while open valleys good for trotting and a canter, will see more kms travelled.

There is a list of clothing and equipment we recommend for our trips in our e-book, “The Right Gear for Expedition Horseback Riding”, which is too long to place here. You can download this for free on this website – look for the box on the right sidebar of most pages.

The e-book has links that will take you to webpages that show the type of clothing article or equipment we suggest for our trips. If you ride horses, hike and backpack, you probably have many of the items already.

There is also a list of clothing items and tips how to prepare for desert travel for our Gobi trips here. It can be downloaded on the Gobi Crossing page, look under “Important Trip Information”.