DAY6

5.30am and there's a hard frost and biting wind outside. Today we have 140km to do, nearly all off-road. But it's awesome, over eight hours of riding bliss, everything from mountains to river crossings, only a few flakes of snow and no rain, the steppes virtually uninhabited. The mud turns a bit sloppy, but keep the power on and these bikes pull like trains

- they may slide and buck a bit, but keep going. Coffee break brings a local (drunken) farmer across who tries to get us to take some form of homemade nuff.

Dinersh, our guide, foolishly challenges us to a race up a mountain. He means a run, but two of us misunderstand and start our bikes. Deafness means I can't hear his protestations so it's England vs France. British honour is upheld when rocks give way to loose boulders short of the summit. Nice warm yurts greet us at Tsertserleg, which is just as well as everything needs drying again. Our yurt even has a sink - no hot water or wastepipe, but a sink.