Wildest frontier: Mongolia has come to London’s West End, but you can’t beat the real deal: vast plains, an ancient way of life… and yak patties

If you really want to get away from it all, Genghis Khan’s birthplace offers the wildest frontiers to satisfy any self-respecting modern pioneer.

Mongolia’s ruthless 13th-century conqueror who built one of history’s greatest empires is immortalized in a statue atop a museum near the capital Ulaanbaatar. At 40 meters high and silver, it is a fitting tribute to the larger-than-life statesmen.

The exact location of his grave has never been found (bring it on, Indiana Jones) and one of the many legends circulating is that Khan, known to the Mongols as Chinggis, promised ‘I’ll be back’ – just like that by Arnie Schwarzenegger. Terminator.

But when he returns, he will find a much more peaceful country than one would expect after centuries of conflict.

This sparsely populated, landlocked country, wedged between Russia and China, has a larger landmass than France, Italy, Germany and Britain combined – with a long history of conquest and conquest.

During Khan’s reign, its reach spread across Russia. But Mongolia’s other neighbor, China, dominated the country during the 17th and 18th centuries.

In the 1920s it became a satellite state of the Soviet Union, and only in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Bloc, did it regain its independence. Although the Russian language is now losing popularity, its influence remains to this day. But I’ve come to Mongolia to preview a revival of a 1998 play, The Mongol Khan, about its much earlier history, ahead of its West End premiere.

This epic production with dance, music and a cast of 70 is set some 2,000 years ago during the Hunnu Empire and opened at London’s Coliseum on Friday. It tells a fictional story of a brutal power struggle between two brothers, both fighting for the succession of ruler Archug Khan’s empire.

But besides theater recreation, Mongolia has much more real history to offer.

Buddhist altars are still the centerpiece of most Mongolian homes, although Stalinist purges in 1937 led to the destruction of hundreds of Buddhist temples.

At one of the oldest surviving temples, the 16th-century winged-roofed Erdene Zuu Monastery in the ancient Mongolian capital of Karakorum, you can attend a ceremony performed by the resident monks.

And even though the cities are modern, discovering the real Mongolia is all about entering one of the greatest wildernesses in the world: the vast grassy plains known by their Russian name: steppes.

Thrills and thrills: Maureen visits the ‘spectacular’ Red Waterfall (pictured) in the cultural landscape of central Mongolia’s Orkhon Valley

And on the remote steppes, where the hardy nomads make up a third of Mongolia’s 3.3 million inhabitants, life has changed little in thousands of years.

These herders and women live in round, wooden-framed tents known as gers – or yurts, as we may know them.

I’ll be glamping in gloriously remote areas of the country. Sheep, yaks and some snooty-looking camels graze nearby.

The yaks certainly live up to their talkative yakkety-yak name when I approach a herd. One has been saddled up for those of us wild enough to clamber onto this ubiquitous hairy and horned beast (and top purveyor of milk and yoghurt).

Maureen discovers that yaks (pictured) ‘definitely live up to their talkative yakkety-yak name’

Here the concept of fast food means killing and cooking your dinner on a stove powered by wood or dried cow dung, as we discover when we are invited to a goat feast in one of the gers.

Visitors are welcomed through the hobbit-sized doorways, but it is helpful to bring a small gift such as sweets for the children.

We enjoy local beer and vodka, which ends with a woman in our group being invited to become the second wife of an excited young Mongolian man.

Within the gers, the scent of wild sage is everywhere – if only that intoxicating scent could be bottled to sell alongside Mongolia’s coveted cashmere. However, the latter is easily matched in softness by yak and camel wool – woven from the animals’ delicate neck hair.

Mongolians stick to a simple life, with part-time nomads from the cities staying in summer gers and herding herds that full-time nomadic neighbors have taken care of them during the harsh winters. Everyone looks out for each other. As our guide Bayana, a 55-year-old grandmother, explains, herders keeping watch from the hills with binoculars will call for help if a visitor’s 4×4 needs help getting out of a ditch or river.

In Mongolia’s capital, Maureen attends the opening ceremony of the Naadam Festival, an annual celebration of the nation and the three main Mongolian sports in July: wrestling, horse racing and archery.

“Mongolian nomads prefer to travel on horseback and spend so much time in the saddle that they almost resemble the half-man, half-horse centaurs of Greek mythology,” Maureen writes. Pictured: Spectators at the Nadaam Festival horse racing event

While Maureen is in Mongolia, she attends the preview of The Mongol Khan, a revival of a 1998 play, ahead of its West End premiere.

Mongolian nomads prefer to travel on horseback and spend so much time in the saddle that they almost resemble the half-man, half-horse centaurs of Greek mythology – although motorcycles are now sometimes used to round up herds of sheep and goats.

Their horses are short and stocky, a relief for a rusty rider like me as I make my way to the spectacular Red Waterfall in the cultural landscape of central Mongolia’s Orkhon Valley. Our other mode of transportation is a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by retired Army Colonel Major Chinbat.

A Himalayan vulture and a black vulture, side by side on a grass verge just a meter away from us, watch our progress across the country with great interest.

In Mongolia’s capital, the hottest ticket is the opening ceremony of the Naadam Festival, an annual celebration every July of the nation and the three main Mongolian sports: wrestling, horse racing (with riders aged six and up) and archery. It is an incredibly beautiful and moving sight.

Although British citizens do not need a visa to visit Mongolia, there are no direct flights. Instead you change in Frankfurt, Beijing or Istanbul, so it is still an undiscovered secret for many.

My week-long trip isn’t long enough to explore Mongolia’s legendary Gobi Desert, far to the south, where explorers first discovered dinosaur eggs and where bears and snow leopards live in astonishingly diverse terrain.

On the way back to the airport, I stop for a break and come across a nomadic couple offering a local delicacy in their roadside ger: yak patties. The man rolls out the dough and the woman cuts the beef-like meat into cubes. I sit back, realizing that Mongolia has served up an exciting feast.