Edward Wong (’98), New York Times
August 6, 2006

I BEGAN having second thoughts about riding a horse through northern Mongolia right around the moment I slammed into the tree trunk.

Without warning, my horse had bolted toward it and I had no idea how to regain control. The impact flung me through the air. I landed hard on the forest floor as my horse scampered into the bush.

Then a crashing sound came from behind — Chuka, the Mongolian guide who had been bringing up the rear of our group of four travelers, had been thrown off his horse too. A short, round man, he picked himself up and shook his head to bring himself back to his senses, or maybe just to blow off the cobwebs of a bad hangover from a vodka binge the previous night…

It was an inauspicious start to what was to be a three-day horse trek last September in a wilderness area around Khovsgol Lake, a 1,065-square-mile patch of pristine blue water that lies just south of the border with Russia in the Siberian plain.

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