INTRO
Greetings fellow motorcycle and travel enthusiasts,
My name is Bruno, I am a serious motorcycle fanatic from the kingdom of Belgium, currently 29 years on the clock (sorry if my English is weird, I haven’t written any piece what so ever since college).
I love driving motorbikes, always have, love travelling too, and always looking for nice motorcycle destinations. So after staring at google earth long enough, Mongolia seemed like a nice country to go ride round a bit on a motorbike. And I have been wanting to undertake a "real" adventure for some time now. Never done anything like this before though. My usual motorcycling travels are around Europe and include hotels, , steaks and comfy beds. Not really a camper either. I actually only ever camp at Tomorrowland or some other festivals (cutting down on that lately though).
But I'm hitting thirties and so I guess I felt it was time for such a thing, Mongolia it is! since I only had 2 weeks vacation left from work, I couldn't drive my own KTM Adventure all the way over there (wouldn't that be a journey), and to ship it by plane is just too expensive.
Rental it is then…
Not many rental companies in Mongolia's capital city Ulaanbaatar (Ulan-Bator). Also my endless going on about my trip whenever I saw my friends, had 2 of them convinced to join me, which I was very stoked about. They are both close friends and brilliant motorcycle drivers called Chappy and Tom (28 & 25 years old, I think). But now I had to find 3 decent bikes to carry us around on a 1200km trip around central Mongolia, most of it off-road.
I ended up with Cheke tours just outside the capital, website is Cheke Tours
Friendly but strict and hard lady runs the business.
She rents out 150cc Mustang Shineray for 13€/day. After some research they appear to be "the real nomad bikes" and all locals drive it and they have good knowledge about fixing it with a hammer and a kitchen knife if needed.
Seems all a bit too good to be true for this kind of money, but I decided to go for it. There was not much choice anyway and I read (some) good reviews about Cheke online. So in the next parts you can read about our experience in Mongolia and some nice photos I hope you will enjoy.
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Part 1 – OFF WE GO!

So here we are then, flights booked, motorcycles reserved, vaccinations received (not so fun), passports and international driving licenses acquired, camping gear sorted out (very last minute).Below a picture of us ready to go at Dusseldorf airport (cheaper than flying from Brussels)
Standing left is Tom, I am the tall guy in the middle and Chappy on the right.

We booked flights with China Air going over Beijing, which was all good, except for the food. But hey, nothing a good Chinese Ying Yang couldn’t fix (at least I think it was called that). Arriving in Ulaanbaatar a good 20hours after leaving Dusseldorf, I immediately got a good send of Mongolia’s nature. As you fly over and approach to land you can already see vast beautiful sceneries without any infrastructure in it, yessss just what I hoped!

The capital city from looked like one of those huge sovjet cities you’ve seen in the news.

After immigration and money change we took a taxi to the hotel I’d booked via booking.com. By the way in Mongolia I was officially a millionaire for a few days 600€ is about 1.3million Mongolian Tugrik, which was quite a few centimeters of money.

The first night in Mongolia did not go in too well though. We arrived at our hotel after a maniacal taxi ride just when the evening fell and it got dark. The hotel was “OK” for a 50 USD per night but was not in a very good part of the city (as we were already advised on the plane by a local passenger).
The Life hotel had no restaurant so we went out a few blocks to eat some pasta, which was quite good. But when we wanted to go to a bar we got hassled by a few drunks, Mongolia has quite a serious alcohol problem combined with high unemployment. They spoke no English and we had no idea what they wanted. They shouted and grabbed Jonas for some unknown reason and tried to drag him off to somewhere. After some shouting and pulling we got Chappy free of the fat drunk his grip on him. We realized the situation was bleak as it was a 15 to 3 man stand down in a strange country where NOBODY speak English. So yeah I yelled to run back to the hotel which was just a few 100meters away. These drunken sods would never be able to outrun us I assumed. They did try very hard however, they followed close on our heels all the way up to the hotel. We ran straight to the security guard (who also did the reception but spoke no English).
But it was no problem as the drunks did not enter the hotel, they stayed outside a while and took off again.
Below you see the morning view from the hotel of the street where we ran away the night before.

In the morning we received a breakfast which tasted very off so we did not go for that. Since we would depart on our motorcycle trip the next day, we felt we needed a boost. Also we were not looking forward to meet the drunks from the night before again, who knew where we stayed. So we decided to go for one of the best hotels in the city and give ourselves a treat. We stayed at the Chinggis Khan Hotel, which was rated on booking.com more than 150€ per night. Arriving at the desk however got us rooms for 65USD per night each, nice deal
The hotel also has a huge supermarket in it, where a lot of wealthy Mongolians shop. Since we would be out for 10 days we needed to stack up on a lot of food, and so we did. After a massive shopping spree and a bill of roughly 500000 Mongolian Tugrik we were ready to go! In the evening we enjoyed a last good steak and s in the excellent restaurant and discovered that the 40 USD massage you could have in the spa of the hotel, was not just a massage at all

PART 2 – motorcycles!
So the big day arrived.
We get up in good spirits and all excited about what we are about to do.
We get in the taxi and after some unnecessary stops and detours from our cheeky driver who proudly wanted to show off his city, we arrive at Cheke tours.It’s located near a main road just outside the city in a small village, does not look like a business at all actually, but I did not expect much more to be honest.

The bikes were lined up and looking in good nick, thoroughly used already, but in good nick. We paid Cheke, who said the deposit for the bike was 700€ instead as 500€ on the website. But I did not feel like arguing and paid for the three bikes, a gps (very old one), a map and some cooking pots and a gas stove. We tied up our luggage and were keen to get going.

Above picture demonstrates the noobs we are at these kind of endeavors. We tied our water on top of the rack of the steering wheel, which is a very smart plan if you prefer endless steering wobble from 9 liters of water sloshing around on your front wheel. Also Cheke got us a bit nervous by talking about careless drunk drivers without insurance, robbers and aggressive drunk man in the open country side.

So with small hearts and high hopes we set off…for about 500 meters.
We pulled up at a gas station just outside Cheke’s and after filling up with dino juice, Tom’s bike did not start again and we could not find the problem. We went to get the mechanic that works at Cheke’s (who wore army boots and had a ring with the nazi swastika on it) to fix the bike. We don’t know what the problem was, as our right winged but friendly mechanic spoke no English. But it must have been quite a big problem it took him almost 2 hours to fix it. It was something with the carburetor that’s all we know.