Our friend Erik Cooper has been offered a spot to compete in the Mongol Derby 2012! For those of you that don’t know, this is a 10 day horse race in August 2012 across outer Mongolia. Below is a video of him getting ready with this beautiful horse.
The info below is taken from Erik Cooper’s facebook page here.
“The Mongol Derby is, according to The Guinness Book of World Records: longest, toughest horse race in the world. It’s the Khaan’s mother of equine adventures, a 1000 km multi-horse race across the epic wilderness of the Mongolian steppe. Its mammoth network of horse stations is a recreation of Genghis Khaan’s legendary empire-busting postal system.”
We’ll be riding for 12 hours or more a day, depending on what we can handle, navigating across Mongolia through rain, swollen rivers and mountains, through herds of wild horses and Bactarin Camels. We will be switching out horses two to three times a day at urttus along the way. We will be camping at night with either just our horse of the moment or with the Mongolian nomads and eating whatever they are cooking for dinner.
There will be a live tracker so my family/friends/sponsors can be a part of the adventure. Looks like there will also be satellite stations at some points along the race for riders to upload video/photos. I can’t wait to share my experiences hanging with the nomads and wild horses with everyone.
I will be racing to raise money/awareness for 2 charities:
The Mercy Corps of Mongolia:
http://www.mercycorps.org.mn/
The Children’s Scholarship Fund:
http://www.scholarshipfund.org/
Here’s the race’s official website if you’d like to read more on it.
http://www.theadventurists.com/
