MORON TO MORON

Uncrossable rivers! Hospitable nomads! Rabid dogs! Marijuana fields! Hailstone flashfloods! Maidens on horseback! Underpants Wrestling! Toxic mountaintop lakes! Stupid westerners! And the mountain-biking – so much biking your arse will hurt just reading it.

In July 2010, Tom Doig and his best mate Tama Pugsley cycled 1487 kilometres across northern Mongolia from a small town called Moron to a smaller town, also called Moron. Why? Because there were two towns called Moron – and they were two morons. It had to be done. Armed with spandex unitards, an inadequate phrasebook and Chinese steel-frame bikes of a brand you've never heard of, Tom and Tama's mission over the barren steppes and rugged mountains of Mongolia is an outrageously absurd odyssey, taking place in one of the world's most remote and beautiful wildernesses. This hilarious, dangerous, at-times-idiotic adventure overflows with sweat, mud, unidentifiable meat product, and torrents of Chinggis Khaan vodka, named after Genghis Khan, the greatest warrior who ever lived. Moron to Moron is a travel book like no other. It has it all: pleasure, pain, heartache, heartburn and the dried fermented milk of a horse. Stuff yourself headfirst into Tom and Tama's panniers and soak up Mongolia through their bloodshot eyes. In time you will come to understand the true meaning of the words of an enigmatic basketballer they met in a nightclub: 'Big country – big history – big Chinggis!'. Tom Doig is a Melbourne writer and publicist. He wrote Hitlerhoff, a theatre show that sold out its three-week season at the 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival ('clever, funny and outrageous' – The Age) and toured successfully to the 2009 Adelaide Fringe ('I loved every second of it' – Rip It Up). He has also written a full-length autobiographical performance monologue, Survival of the Prettiest, which he performed throughout Australia.