Motor Caravans Often Beset by Bandits: The Luxury of Flying Over Gobi Broadly speaking, there are three different routes the traveller to Urga can take, by ear cither from Kalgan fof Manchouli, or by aeroplane or car from Verkne-Udinsk. The, former is perhaps the most interesting and arduous, as it necessitates the cross ug of the Gobi Desert through very wild country, and It is to be recom mended to those wishing to get 9 coper insight into the lives and customs of the native Mongol.
The camel caravan, though the usual method of journeying amongst the Mongols, cannot be recommended to foreigners, and valuable goods and passengers bound for Urea are Usually sent by motor ear or lorry. Both are always overloaded, it being nothing Unusual (o°see an ordinary touring ear carrying from twenty fo 24 passengers. These cars genertily travel in {wos or threes, and mutual assistance is rendered when fairly often happens, one of the fears breaks down, On leaving Kalgan, the road winds along an old river-bed, slowly rising for about twenty miles, when high mountain pass is reached and every: tone gets out to push the groaning car tup, At the top of the poss is a small chinese temple, where the native passengers disembark to say a brief Prayer for their safe return and ro-Ward the attendant priest with a fo: coppers Once over the pass, and the motor caravan arrives at the Mongolian plains, reaching the first, station, Mlautan, towards dusk, Everyone Immediately makes tracks for the usual village inn, complete with bugs, molls, ote; after a day of bumping About over earth roads and getting fof to push when the car stalls and Jumping back again when she gets going, however, it Is a welcome haven.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.