Count Kostov has learned that the cost of everything is not always financial.

This holiday to Mongolia was meant to research tribes and territory. There were two problems with this:
- the nomads have no tribes
- the nomads have no concept of territory.

The third of the two problems was the food. If you like sour mare's milk, fatty sheep's tail, dried yoghurt blocks and sheep's head stew with the sheep's gelatonous eyes staring out at you from the dish, then Mongolia is the place to be. Research has a high digestive price associated with it.

The last of the two problems were the horses. Clearly, the count's cossack heritage has been diluted by too many year's in the decadent west (not decadent enough, but that is another story). The Mongols do not think you are a good rider until you have shown you can fall off. By the end of the first morning, they felt I must be an excellent rider, because I kept on falling off. Meanwhile, I felt I had broken every bone I knew existed, and a few more besides. The problem was that the horses only had two speeds: extremely fast and suicidally fast. They could stop on a sixpence which was fine for them: I would normally stop a few yards later having performed a series of sumersaults, pikes and turns which would gaurantee a gold in the Olympics.

Dealing with the venomous con artists and rip off merchants who dream up their fanciful "cost of" studies is safer and simpler than all this tribal stuff. Back to the grindstone......