Edge of Blue Heaven: A Journey Through Mongolia

This book, which accompanies a BBC Television series, both capture the travel of Benedict Allen through Mongolia. Allen is a very experiences traveller, used to putting himself through trials, and his solo trip across the Gobi Desert is a trial, and even Mongolians he meets on his travels struggle with the ‘why' of this trip.

Allen carried out an almost circular route around Mongolia - anticlockwise commencing in the far north near the Russian border, travelling initially by jeep south to commence a horse and camel sector west through the province Uvs, then follows parallel to the southern border (with China), the vast part of his journey which occurs in the Gobi until he meets up with the main train line from Ulaan Baatar to China, close to the Chinese border. He completes his trip on the Trans Mongolian train north to UB.

For part of the journey Allen travels with a companion, either Khurmit (who he insists on referring to as Kermit throughout the book - rather disrespectfully) - a young man with horse experience, who is proud of his involvement in the journey, but is equally driven by the thought of the bars of UB, dollars and booze; or Ermek, in his jeep who picks up his trail every so often to smooth the way with locals and officials; or occasionally they cross over and travel together. For the 4 weeks of the true desert crossing however, Allen is truly alone; notwithstanding the two or so occasions he runs across shepherds with flocks of sheep utilising the very sparse grazing on the desert margins.

This is a somewhat selfish trip, the author is driven to make a solo crossing of the main part of the Gobi Desert.. Allen is on a deadline, set by the seasons - he must compete his journey across the Gobi before winter, when conditions will make it impossible. As such he must travel faster than is ideal, in fact 50 kilometres per day is his goal. Experienced Mongolian camel men tell him 30km per day is a more reasonable target, but this is not going to get him across the desert in time. Camels have a soft pad on their feet, this gets worn when travelling long distances on rocky or hard ground, and this practicality sets a Mongolian limit. So he pushes his horses and camels too hard, and effectively ‘wears them out'.

Otherwise Allen generally treats them well, tending to any injuries and feeding them well, going back to search for them when they stray. It is not a cruelty he displays, just a selfish drive to achieve his goal. The largest part of the book is about Allen's horses and camels. He takes great effort to describe them, their temperaments, their behaviours, and ultimately their inability to go on, or the fact they abandon him. Throughout the book he does constantly change his horses and camels as they tire. He is not always able to buy the most suitable beasts, so the fact they are not able to last is affected by this fact too.

I spent 18 days in Mongolia in 2005, 10 days of which was a van trip around the southern desert. The scenery is seriously impressive - the variance of the desert is amazing - the sparse grasslands, the rocky outcrops, dry lakes, dry and dusty steppe, even sand dunes. There are loads of very good photos in this book, which brought it all back to me. Some however are out of alignment with the text, occasionally spoiling events still to come (a camel which abandons him is the example I can recall).

So a mixed outcome. Probably 3.5 stars, rounding up to 4 due to the great photography.