Young Brit becomes first solo adventurer to walk 1,500-miles across Mongolia

A young Brit has become the first solo adventurer to walk across the 1,500 miles spanning Mongolia, which is one of the globe's most desolate and unforgiving landscapes.

23-year-old Ash Dykes from Colwyn Bay, in North Wales, battled sandstorms, heat exhaustion and unforgiving loneliness as he completed his record-setting 78-day trip and he became such a familiar sight to the tribes living in the region, that they nicknamed him 'the lonely snow leopard'.

Finishing the solo mission from Mongolia's western border with Russia to its easterly border with China on Wednesday, Dykes said that it is an absolutely unreal feeling, adding that it still has not really sunk in and feels surreal, The Daily Express reported.

Dyke, who started his dangerous 1,500-mile walk on Tuesday 20 May, said that he has done what a lot of people said would be impossible.

Dyke travelled from dizzying heights of the Altai Mountains to the scorching plains of the Gobi Desert, before entering the record books on Wednesday 6 August.

Mongolia is the second largest landlocked country on Earth but it is also its most sparsely populated, with a total population of only 31,33,318 people, roughly the same as the city of Madrid, but spread thin across 6,03,930 square miles.

The record-breaking Brit, who works as a scuba dive instructor, said that it was sometimes difficult leaving a really nice family in a small settlement or isolated yurt to face the extreme conditions alone all over again.

He added that at one point he walked for around eight days without seeing a single soul. But he said that he was so determined to make it that he did not let it bother him too much.

On his longest day of walking, the lonely snow leopard racked-up a staggering 14 hours on his feet, covering a total of 34 miles, a bigger distance than the channel separating England and France.

The Welsh wanderer also reached a peak altitude of 2,700 metre, all whilst dragging a 120kg home-made trailer behind him filled with dehydrated food ration packs, a large water butt and the camping equipment needed to survive his trek through all the brutal terrain, the report added.

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