Two years ago I toured Mongolia by motorbike. I'd wanted to go by horseback: in high school I'd worked part-time as a florist and a stable boy and had images of myself galloping across slopes of Mongolian mountain flowers. Being a stable boy isn't as glamorous as it might sound, if it does at all. I'd expected it to be something like the role of Buttercup's Westley but with more riding. There was no riding and instead of fetching overhead pale's for Buttercup I spent mornings shoveling shit for Captain, the prized American Quarter Horse, and his stable mates. I learned a lot about equine psychology at that job.

You never get behind a horse that doesn't know you. A kick can crack a rib or worse, though I never had a horse flick a leg my way. Once they know you, the mischievous ones'll snap you with their tails if you don't watch it. Playful, but it stings. Then after cleaning their stalls we'd put them out for the day. That's when it was important to know who didn't along with whom, where romances existed and jealousies were growing. You wanted to avoid fights and keep things civil but remember to group friends with friends if you could. Almost like knowing how to pair off kids for a school field trip.

It was good work, but not what I'd thought it would be. Mongolia surprised me too. Ulaanbaatar was hell. Dirty, dangerous, unattractive. A car full of teenagers swerved close one night as I was walking the sidewalk and one leaned out to spit on my chest. Locals said it was better not to speak to Mongolian girls in any club unless you were ready to square off with a handful of UB thugs. I got out after two days. Mongolia was just too big. No horse could cover it all in just one summer, so my travelmate and I tried to get ahold of bikes instead. He was a big biker and promised me he could handle any mechanical issues, but UB didn't have the Russian models we were looking for so we took the bus north into Selenge.

The Russian bikes we'd were dependable and rugged and most Mongolians in the countryside rode them into the ground and knew how to work them from adolescence. Selenge was out too, so we picked up two Chinese models instead. Mongolians tend to look down on Chinese products (I offered one man some Chinese crackers I bought from a supplies shop and after checking the package he declined, saying China deliberately put chemicals in their food exports to Mongolia in order to weaken the Mongolian people), however our bikes got praise wherever we went. They rode higher off the ground too, which got us through Selenge's many rivers -- when the Siberian snows melt, northern Mongolia is awash with delicious crystal fresh waters in the summer, but more than one I flooded my engine and soaked my boots.

Much of the land resembled golf courses: plush Teletubby green hills rolling into the distance. My travelmate and my bike racks both broke and were rigged with string after that, so we were often stopping to retie out packs. Not far from Khövsgöl Lake we rode into a town on a stream comprising no more than 20 homes. There was a supply shop. I got a loaf of bread, some Russian chocolate and a bottle of water. After a moment or two, several men in military uniform rode up on horseback and arrested us. We were led to their base. I think they might've been border police. In any case, the reason for our arrest was that this town was almost within sight of the Russian border and we didn't have valid visas for being so near Russia. They told that if we'd gone any closer, Russian border police might well have shot us. "Just through those trees," said one guy as he pointed to the pines behind their base, "and you die."

Back in Selenge were we'd bought the bikes, I'd also run into a young guy who sold me a dime bag. I had this in my pocket in the guard's station as they made us empty everything from our bags. They were well impressed with our iPods. I played some of the Mongolian music I'd downloaded, some Jazz, some Hip-Hop. They'd never heard Jazz before. I played Louis Armstrong's "Potato Head Blues" and "What a Wonderful World". The otherwise stern commander smiled. Satchmo's raspy voice reminded him of khöömii, or the overtone singing of western Mongolia. I opened my tin of candy and gave everyone a piece. I gave the commander a carabiner. They let us pack up our stuff and showed us the safest way out of town toward Khövsgöl. Later that day we passed a ger (Mongolian yurt) and were chased by the owner's dogs. My travelmate once had a bad experience with rabid dogs in India and has understandably been somewhat phobic ever since. He rode over a giant rock trying to get away and did considerable damage to his bike.

Khövsgöl was beautiful. The wide beach of stones leading into the lake. The white hide of ger lined along the shore. The eastern side was meant to be prettier and better for horse trekking, but muddier too. We rented a ger on the western side and took our first real rest of the trip. We'd been riding hard, averaging nine hours a day, so it was good to pull our boots off for a spell. They even had an Internet cafe in the village. Checking my mail, I found out my girlfriend was interested in cosmetic surgery. I asked her to think it over.

I'd planned to travel farther west, out to Bayan-Ölgii where the densest forests grew and, I'd read, where the truest Kazakh culture could be found -- in Kazakhstan itself, the Soviets had all but wiped it out.But the next day I told my travelmate I was turning back, heading to Mörön and then UB to fly back to Seoul to persuade my girlfriend not have the surgery. That night I got to the last town before Mörön around 9PM. The man at the supply shop said it was three or four hours' more to Mörön, but the sun sets late in Mongolia so I figured I could make it before dark. I took a bag of bread rolls, a bottle of vodka (in case I had to sleep outside I had no tent and would need the vodka to be able to sleep in the unbearable cold) and he gave me free of charge two empty canvas grain sacks.

I didn't make it to Mörön. In the dark I mistook a dry riverbed for the path and wound up lost deep in the heart of a valley. I rode on to find a way out but the valley grew steeper. Along the ridge of one of the hills I spotted the silhouette of two grey wolves tracking me. I finally gave up and turned round, rode back almost forty minutes before finding a way to pull out of the valley. It was well after midnight by then and the cold was cutting through my gloves. I just said fuck it and cut the engine at the top of a hill. It would be a waste of gas to ride on in the dark. Come morning I'd take a look around and find my way back to the path. I cut the hole out of the bottom of one grain sack and wore it around my waist with the other sack around my feet to keep my sleeping bag dry from the coming morning dew (I had no tent). I drank a quarter of the vodka, not too much because I feared I'd fall asleep and the cold would take me. I'd have to be sober enough to wake up if the cold got too bad. I ate some bread and looked up at the stars.

The only time I've ever seen a sky so deep and rich was over Machu Picchu. The sky was practically purple there, like a puma's coat embedded with a thousand diamonds. It was bloody cold but I removed my coat and tied it about my neck in case a wolf grabbed me while I slept. Back in Khövsgöl I'd bought a 1945 Soviet bayonet knife from a small camping shop. I took this out and slept holding under my head like a pillow. In the night something did grab me. It pulled the coat around my neck and the force of it almost lifted my upright. I woke up swinging with the knife. There was nothing. Just darkness. Silence. I waited a long time before sleeping again. I awoke maybe an hour later. It wasn't light yet but it was too cold to sleep. I packed up my stuff and rode. Two or three hours later I was running out of gas and still lost. I was in Khövsgöl Aimag, or Khövsgöl Province, the largest and simultaneously less populated in Mongolia. My only hope was to hit either Mörön or the town I'd come from before running out of gas. I has what was left of the vodka and half a bag of bread rolls. If I ran out of gas, I wouldn't survive the week.

An hour later, almost out of gas, I broke down and started crying. I wrote a letter to my parents. I had only eough gas to make it to Mörön if I chose precisely the right direction. I was riding by a hill running all this through my head, just about to cut the engine, when a hill in the foreground eclipsed one behind it -- the very instant this happened I looked in that direction and saw a glint. Then it was gone. I stopped the bike, backed up, and there it was. A distant flash. If I'D turned my head to the right one second later I'd have missed it. It was a bike. A farmer was inspecting a slope with his rifle over one shoulder and his wife beside him. They were a sturdy looking pair, the two of them, and when I rode up I'm surprised he didn't shoot me -- I practically fell off my bike, ran to him almost crying, gave him a hug and rushed through a broken Mongolian explanation (frantically tearing through the pages of my Lonely Planet guidebook for help) of everything I'd experienced:

"Lost!" I said. "Wolf! Two wolf!" I put my hands over my head to make two pointed ears and snarled in my best impersonation of a wolf. "Night. Wolf. Bite." I gestured how the wolf had bitten the coat around my neck. Of course I wasn't actually sure a wolf had attacked me in the night, but I didn't tell him so. He listened with a serious expression. His wife laughed. Then he pointed to Mörön. I begged him to show me the way. I couldn't risk getting lost again. After some 'discussion', he said something to his wife, left her the rifle, and bid me follow him. He rode fast. We took several turns, and I realized I'd never had found the road by simply going the way he'd pointed. At the road to Mörön, I tried to pay him but he shook his head no. I asked him his name. He told me then took my dictionary and turned a few pages. Here, he pointed, this one: angel. Then we shook hands and he left.

Halfway to town I got to a supply shop and bought a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. I ate half the jar and half the loaf in less than a minute. Just outside the town I passed a father and his son. The father wanted to know if I had cigarettes. I told him no, but I gave him the peanut butter and bread. His son had never had peanut butter before. He was elated. I sold my bike in town, probably for too little, but still overall for a decent price, and was in Seoul two days later -- though after my girl got the surgery. I missed seeing Naadam, the summer festival, by one week. On our way to the lake though, after our arrest, my travelmate and I had run into two Mongolian wrestlers who were excited to meet two foreigners and decided to ride three days with us to the shore. They rode hard, deep into the night, never steering to cut around obstacles but riding right over top of rocks or logs. They were big men too. Hand slike gorillas. One said he was an old wrestling champ. I saw the two of them go at it one night after a round of vodka. They were dead fast and held nothing back -- I once thought one had seriously wounded the other. I wrestled in high school and had considered entering Naadam for fun, but after seeing these fellas go at it I didn't regret missing my chance.

One last thing. The fellas took us to a ger one night. Doors are sacred in Mongolia so you don't knock on them. You just swing 'em open and step inside. I was too shy my first time so they went in ahead of me. I mean, what if folks were having sex inside? I got used to walking in later. This night though we crashed with a man and his wife and their two sons and three daughters. The father inspected us a long time while the wife spooned out delicious cupfuls of fresh yogurt. The father decided in the end to put us in the shed. There were two cots out there and plenty of blankets. My travelmate and I tucked in and relaxed. My cot was beside the window. I lay awake wondering about our host. "You know," I said to my friend, "he could come in here and kill us and no one would ever know. We're days from the nearest city. It's not like there are police or anything." My friend told me not to be paranoid. Just then our host kicked open the door with his shotgun in one hand and ran toward me. I nearly pissed myself. He reached for me -- over me -- and grabbed his coat. His eldest son was in the doorway, also with a rifle. Then they were outside again. In the dark I could hear the distant cry of dogs. The next morning, a fresh wolf's hide lay spread over the fence.