What makes a person want to sign up to the "longest and toughest horse race in the world"? Even now, having ridden the Mongol Derby myself – a thousand-kilometre trek across a barren steppe on a succession of wild Mongolian ponies – I'm still not sure I know the answer. But I have a better ideas of what drives others to put themselves through the equestrian endurance test that's equivalent to an Ironman that lasts for the best part of a fortnight.
After Lara Prior-Palmer, niece of British event rider Lucinda Green, won the race in 2013, aged just 19, she described the experience in her memoir, Rough Magic, as akin to doing the Tour de France on unknown bicycles.
