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It sounded like a great idea, ride a two-humped camel 120 miles in the Gobi Desert for charity, what an adventure.
Artist Bob Olley and nurse Carol Butler both of South Shields took up the challenge to raise funds for MacMillan Nurses NE and St Clare's Hospice, South Tyneside.
They were given a list of helpful tips on local customs what food to expect (mostly mutton and yoghurt) and suitable clothing as temperatures can be as high as 35 during the day, falling to 5 below at night. Toilets were to be "in nature" and we were to go unwashed for six days.
They would meet up on September 10th 2004 with 48 other fund raisers, mostly women horse riders from all over the UK, fly to the capital of Mongolia, Ulaan Bataar then taken on a seven hour journey over the steppe (no roads) by mini bus, camp in a ger (traditional Mongolian felt tent) village then in the morning be allocated a camel and given instructions on camel handling. Sounds easy.

Day 1
After 25 hours of travelling we met the camels which we were assured were tame and used to people.  The plan was to have five camel handlers each leading ten docile, plodding camels in single file.
Something got lost in the translation or the Mongolian standards of tame are a lot different to ours.

The camel boss, a big Mongolian in a creased, black Western suit, gave some do's and don'ts through an interpreter on the art of mounting and dismounting, we were always to approach from the right and never walk behind the beast.  Fifty camels make two hundred legs to look out for!
The people with no riding experience were to be the first to mount the "quiet" animals.
The camels were made to kneel down so their riders could get on board.
After half an hour only three ladies had managed to stay on while the camels lurched backward, forward and backward as they stood up. After an hour the first two groups were mounted and stood waiting for the rest.  As the handlers got to the bigger beasts things began to go wrong and it was taking longer and longer to get them to the sitting position.  Now, when a camel gets angry it grunts and groans and green regurgitated cud is spat out in all directions with great velocity and accuracy.

Our UK doctor and I stood out of spitting distance observing the herd becoming more and more agitated, and then the doc said "that in his experience if anything is going to go wrong it's always in the first hour".  As the words left his lips two camels in the first group broke free, threw their female riders to the ground and galloped off across the steppe leaving the rest of the riders hanging on to the front hump of their mounts for dear life.

Narrowly avoiding a full stampede the handlers regained control amidst a barrage of green camel spit, as the doctor treated the two injured ladies. The tour manager decided to let those who were on their camels proceed with the trek while those who still wanted ride could mount up, however most now decided to walk.
The injured, one with a badly bruised breast bone the other with a broken collarbone were bussed back to the camp.

By the end of the day four people had been thrown from the camels, two more had narrow escapes.
It was impossible for the lady with the broken collar-bone to be sent back to Ulaan Bataar on a seven hour journey by mini-bus over pot holed tracks so our guide and tour manager set of to find a village with a public phone (a rarity in Mongolia)
They returned two hours later to say that Mongolia Airlines had agreed to send a helicopter the next day.

Day 2   Day 3 & 4

Day 5& 6