A trek for the ages: Duncan's 3500km journey across Mongolia

The experienced equestrian recently returned from the Blue Wolf Totem Expedition, a three-month trek through Mongolia to help raise money to care for and educate Mongolian children living in poverty.

As of writing, the trek had raised more than $125,000USD.

Mr McLaughlin joined 16 other riders for the trek which lasted from late April to late July. The trek started in the southern part of the country near the Chinese border, rode north to the Russian border, then west to near the Kazakh border.

The riders averaged 50 kilometres a day for 84 days of riding on a trek of 3640 kilometres.

"I rode between 50 and 60 different horses," Mr McLaughlin said.

"Mongolians call them horses, but we'd call them ponies. They were between 11 and 12 hands, so they were very small and had choppy little strides.

"We'd swap the horses out every 800 to 1000 kilometres, and each group would be about 30 horses. Most horses would do one day on, one day off, but there were superstar horses who would go day after day.

"You mostly got a new horse every day, and you'd have to confer with your fellow riders about whether the horse was good or not."

Mr McLaughlin said all of the 17 riders on the trek had "ridden a fair bit" before, but said there was still a "lot of variation" in the ability of the riders.

The trek would usually set up a camp at the end of each day, but would also stay in Mongolian hotels from time to time.

"In regional Mongolia, a hotel is usually just a two-storey building with two rooms," Mr McLaughlin said. "Staying at a hotel meant the 17 of us piling into this single space and putting our air mattresses and sleeping bags down.

"One of my strongest memories from the trek is just getting into camp tired each night and drinking vodka before dinner each night because it was really cheap. You'd start late each morning because it's so cold, so we never really started until 9.30am even though it gets light at 4am.

"There was a really good selection of people there as well, we didn't have any major arguments. I think people knew to respect each other's space, and if you wanted a quiet day you'd just go and ride a little while away from the group."

Mr McLaughlin said the ride could be challenging at times due to "undermined" earth and long days in the saddle.

"Mongolia has six or seven burrowing animals," he said. "The whole land is undermined to the point where there would be some areas where your horse would take two steps and fall into a hole.

"We had lots of falls because people would be trotting along and their horse's front legs would got into a hole, so they'd tumble over the front.

"I probably wouldn't do it again, but I would recommend everyone do it once. It's more arduous than you think, I lost 15 kilograms over the time.

"You'd generally get on and off your horse to walk beside it to keep you supple, but Mongolian horses don't like you getting on and off - they'll often buck - so once you're on, you're on."

Mr McLaughlin did bring one large souvenir home with him: a tattoo in the image of 'deer stones' found across Mongolia.

"In the Bronze Age, the people of Mongolia would get pillars of rock and they would carve these images into them," he said.

"One was the image of a man, and one was a deer stone which they think are based on reindeers.

"They're all across Mongolia, and no-one knows what they are. Some people say they're burial sites, others think they're marking good places to camp.

"They were often on a fairly flat space near water and grass."