Wild world

Wildlife books about Mongolia

Birds of Mongolia

Mongolia encompasses a wide range of habitats including forests, mountains, vast plains and of course the Gobi Desert.  There has never been a guide to the birds of Mongolia before and this new field guide will provide full details of every species to be found in the country.Written by Sundev Gombobaatar, Mongolia’s most famous ornithologist.

Using plates specially created for the book, the guide follows traditional field guide design with plates arranged opposite the text. Detailed maps – a mapping feat never before attempted for this remote land – accompany the text.

The Lost Camels of Tartary – described The Independent as “destined to become a modern adventure classic”

In 1992 John Hare talked himself onto a Russian-Mongolian expedition into the Gobi desert as their hastily appointed “expert” on the wild Bactrian camel, one of the most endangered species on the planet. Hare was no camel expert, but four expeditions into the wastelands of the Gobi desert and seven years later, Hare has miraculously persuaded the Chinese authorities to establish a massive nature sanctuary to prevent what looked like the inevitable extinction of this particularly enigmatic ship of the desert. The Lost Camels of Tartary is Hare’s remarkable story. As he says at the outset of this extraordinary book, “I am neither a qualified naturalist or a scientist, but have always had the instincts of an explorer”. As a consequence the book often reads like a good old- fashioned tale of epic discovery and adventure, including being marooned in one of the world’s most forbidding deserts, the Gashun Gobi in Central Asia, as well as the discovery of ancient cities stretching back to the days of Genghis Khan and Marco Polo. Yet The Lost Camels of Tartary is also a compelling account of Hare’s growing commitment to the cause of the remarkably resilient wild Bactrian camel, living on a diet of salt water and radiation courtesy of the bombardment of its natural habitat by repeated Chinese nuclear tests.

John Hare is a star author and one of the most well-known explorers of his generation. The Gobi is a perennially fascinating part of the world – a desert that people love to read about. China, the environment/natural world, exploration and discovery: broad and topical appeal. The Gobi is the largest, coldest and driest desert in Asia. Its shifting sands conceal ancient cities, 3,000-year-old mummies, dinosaur bones and areas where no man has set foot. It is also the last place on earth where the wild Bactrian camel clings to survival, its fragile habitat threatened by poachers and development. With the conservation of this elusive creature in mind, John Hare was inspired to venture into the wildest parts of the Chinese Gobi on an expedition during which they crossed a hundred miles of sand dunes, unexplored in recorded history. Several weeks into the journey, Hare and the team discovered, in two unmapped valleys, a population of wildlife with no experience of man. Interwoven with the account of his remarkable journey, Hare tells, for the first time, the story of an epic migration made by Kazakh nomads in flight from Chinese communists and describes the historic and current tensions between the Chinese and the indigenous Uighur population of Xinjiang. A blend of history and high adventure, discovery and conservation, ‘Mysteries of the Gobi’ is a unique and compelling account of modern-day exploration. ‘Hare’s compelling account of his expedition to the remote Chinese desert is part travelogue, part natural history. The author’s excitement and enthusiasm for a hostile, unexplored and partly unmapped territory is infectious, perhaps because his experience is so far removed from that of most travellers. Descriptions of the people he meets along the way bring the journey to life;

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