CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
The stops in between: Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a, Deer Stone Monuments and Related Bronze Ag and back through Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Gol Mod II lies in the open valleys of central Mongolia, and the first thing to know is that there is no road to it in the sense most riders mean. You reach it on tracks across the steppe, past herders' gers and grazing horses, and then the tombs appear: a field of low mounds and earthworks, and at its heart a huge square structure with a long ramp, the grave of a member of the Xiongnu elite.
Read the complete Gol Mod II write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gol Mod II is where the day begins. Next is Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a.
The grassland north of the Khangai range does not look like a museum, and that is its quality. Rolling green hills run off to the horizon under a vast sky, herds of horses and yaks drift across the slopes, and here and there a lone grey stone rises from the grass. A Bronze Age complex of this kind, with deer stones and burial mounds, belonged to the nomadic herders who lived on the steppe in the second and first millennia BC. Their world was horses, bows and open sky, and their monuments are simple, bold and without any written record.
Read the complete Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a comes up about 28 km into the recorded legs. Next is Deer Stone Monuments and Related Bronze Ag.
On the open grassland of north-central Mongolia, tall grey slabs of granite stand in lines, tilted slightly towards the sky, with strange carvings on their sides. These are deer stones, and the name comes from the flying deer with long antlers that are carved on them, stylised as streams of curving lines. They were raised by Bronze Age herders about three thousand years ago, probably as memorials to important men, and some stand three or four metres tall. Mongolia has well over a thousand, more than anywhere else in the world, and the best-known groups lie around the Khangai and the northern mountains, within the broader region of the Gol Mod sites that make up this part of the map.
Read the complete Deer Stone Monuments and Related Bronze Ag write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 94 km into the recorded legs you reach Deer Stone Monuments and Related Bronze Ag. Next is back through Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a, late in the day. Next is Gol Mod II.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Gol Mod II write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Gol Mod II. That is the ride.
Gol Mod II → Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a → Deer Stone Monuments and Related Bronze Ag is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Deer Stone Monuments and Related Bronze Ag → back through Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Bronze Age Complex Site with Deer Stones a → Gol Mod II is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.