Monletsgolia are one of 340 teams taking part in the deliberately eccentric Mongol Rally.
The hutong go back almost 800 years and are in fact a Mongol invention.
Mongol culture, society and economy have all been badly damaged under Chinese rule, he says.
ECONOMIST: The good and bad of one of China��s border regions
Former employees say Ellison keeps a book on his desk about Genghis Khan, the ruthless Mongol warlord.
The language has been so devalued that pure Mongol speakers are considered illiterate.
ECONOMIST: The good and bad of one of China��s border regions
When the land-based routes became less accessible after the collapse of the Mongol empire, European traders sought a sea-based alternative.
There followed 250 years (1250-1500) during which Mongol invaders entered the mix and Islamic rule receded from Spain and spread to India.
It traces Temur's rise from obscurity in a small village in what is now Uzbekistan, but was then part of the fragmented Mongol empire.
The region currently occupied by Georgia was a well-beaten path for invading in armies in later centuries -- with Arab, Persian, Turkish and Mongol forces leaving their marks.
Land disputes between miners and Mongol herders became commonplace.
In a typical incident, in May 2011, a group of Mongol herders was trying to stop mining lorries crossing and churning up grassland near their homes about 110km (70 miles) north-east of Xilinhot.
Drivers rev the motors of their beat-up vehicles, shouting in Chinese and Mongol for passengers to board for a 300-yard drive to the Chinese immigration center and then another few miles to the Mongolian equivalent.
When protests erupted in Inner Mongolia after the death in May this year of an ethnic-Mongol herder allegedly when he was run over by a coal-lorry driven by an ethnic-Han Chinese the response in Mongolia itself was muted.
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Up until a couple of years ago this relatively isolated alley, surrounded by high-rise apartments in the western district of Xuanwu, was Beijing's oldest surviving alley, clocking in at a wheezing 900 years old and predating even the Mongol-designed hutong network.
Part Mongol, Roman, Arab, Spaniard, Mexican, '49er, the man who throws diamonds on the high trail is ready to sit in his saddle and settle in to the pokey, grunting, clopping rhythm of a pack train on the move.
This event was as brutal in its consequences as the Mongol invasions, since it led to the destruction of many indigenous civilisations and, eventually, the enforced enslavement and transportation of some 11m Africans to use as a labour force in the discovered lands.
Although it is not, as is commonly believed, the only man-made object visible from space, China's Great Wall still amazes with its sheer size, and remains impressive as a testament to architectural will, and to the need to keep out the Mongol hordes.
One such was a medieval theologian, Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya, a sort of Muslim Luther who in reaction to the Mongol onslaught of the 13th century preached a return to the essentials of the faith, which the ulema (clerics) of the time had forsaken.
With a stunning series of campaigns, almost all of them directed against fellow Muslims, he first subdued Central Asia, then added to his dominions by conquering the Khanate of the Golden Horde, a vast territory stretching north into Russia and Ukraine, and the biggest of the Mongol fragments.
In a speech marking an anniversary of the last Gulf war, Iraq's ruler likened George Bush to Hulagu Khan, the leader of the Mongol hordes who razed Baghdad in 1258 (though the Americans would fall at the gates of the city, he said, not capture its ruler, roll him in a carpet and have their cavalry ride over it, or build pyramids of Muslim skulls, as Hulagu did).
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