Ivo Marloh’s film didn’t live up to expectations.

This sounded interesting. A documentary about the Mongol Derby, the world’s longest horse race: a peek into a totally different way of life and culture, something like The Eagle Huntress which charmed everyone who saw it.

What a let down: turn’s out it’s not some great Mongolian sporting tradition, but the Gee-gee Gumball Rally. A group of privileged westerners using GPS to try to cover a 1000km course on wild Mongolian horses, changing mounts at stations every 40 km along the route. Quite a few of them have an equestrian background, but many are from the fatuous professions: commodities trader; Maitre d’; interface developer, Alexander Technique trainer.

Whatever their background, they all seem to have philosophies taken from Land Rover/ Jeep adverts. One of them proclaims, “The idea of the wide open spaces of Mongolia and the feeling of insignificance in that enormous space, along with horses, I felt would give an amazing spiritual experience of an otherworldly place.”

Yeah, till he fell off.

2/5