Mongolia’s beauty is its sheer remoteness and vastness. A population of three million lives in a country roughly the length of Europe from Rennes, France, to Kiev, Ukraine.

Almost half the people live in the capital Ulaanbaatar, 25 per cent in other towns and the final quarter are nomadic or semi-nomadic.

To travel across the country you must hire a jeep, a driver and a guide as there is no public transport; sharing with others will obviously reduce the cost.

Driving through this sparsely populated country is an experience like no other.

Often the sight of a ger (felt tent) was the only indication of life.

We would drive for hours on end with hardly a soul in sight, and were it not for the herds of horses, cows or sheep and the occasional nomadic ger, the one-room, round, felt tent traditionally used by nomads, we would have been forgiven for thinking that the country was uninhabited, or at least the part we were travelling through.

We were blessed by the fact our driver knew the land like the back of his hands – we covered some 2,000 kilometres in all but not once did he take a wrong turning.

This, it must be said, while driving almost entirely off road, with no road signs whatsoever.

Having experienced the Mongolian road network, for want of a better word, I will never again complain that Maltese roads are not properly signposted.

Nor will I complain about the local potholes – I did not know what potholes were until now.

The highlight of the trip was a visit to a nomad family living in a traditional ger.

We were offered various dairy products, including dried milk curds – which are as hard as rock – and fermented mare’s milk, which tastes like sour cream. It’s not for the squeamish. The container from which the milk was served looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for quite some time.

The ger is Spartan in decoration – separate beds for husband and wife, a small dresser with a small cupboard on each side, a table, some stools and a stove. The furniture is painted bright orange with traditional designs.

Children sleep on mats and blankets on the floor while the roof is supported by two wooden pillars, the one on the right representing the wife, the left the husband.

One must not pass between these two pillars as it is believed this breaks the family apart.

Life in a ger in winter must be harsh: winter in Mongolia is best described as three months in a fridge and three in a freezer. A particularly bad one is known as a zud, which is any condition that stops livestock getting to grass, such as heavy snowfall or impenetrable ice.

Posing with a Mongol horse. Right: Inside a nomad’s ger. Photos: Toni Farrugia

We would have been forgiven for thinking that the country was uninhabited

The horse (mor) is the pride of Mongolia. There are even monuments to honour famous equines. It is said a nomad learns to ride a horse as soon as he can walk.

Mongolians have more than 300 words to describe the country’s two million horses.

Horses on the steppes.

Through the efforts of several Mongolian and international organisations, the Takhi (or Przewalski) horse was reintroduced in the wild after becoming almost extinct earlier last century.

We saw these magnificent animals in the Khustain Nuruu National Park before driving to Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire until Khublai Khan, a descendant of Genghis Khan, established Beijing as the capital.

Here we saw what remains of the Erdene Zuu (Hundred Treasures) Monastery, which was once the largest in the country but was destroyed during Stalin’s purges of the 1930s.

The next day we went horse riding through classic steppe country, stopping at the Shankh Monastery, which was once the home of the great Mongolian theologist Zanabazar.

From there, it was on to the Gobi Desert, including the Singing Dunes (so called because of the beautiful sound that resonates through the dunes on a windy day), the Yolyn Am or Vulture’s Mouth canyon (which is so deep and narrow that even in the height of summer winter ice can remain on the valley floor) and the Flaming Cliffs (where the first fossilised dinosaurs’ eggs were found in the 1920s).

Mongolia is definitely not your ordinary holiday destination. But if you want to go off the beaten track, then it is the country to visit.