Mongolia: Motorcycles Off Road for 10 Days on the Steppe (Insta360 x4)

I, my wife, and two of our steppe sisters took on 10 days in central Mongolia during the Nadaam Festival on 200cc Shinerays in July 2024. Mongolia is an odd place. "Authentic" is a word I hate when it comes to travel. Mongolia isn't authentic. It's tough. The land is tough, the people are tough, the meat is tough. We encountered enchanted forests, steep climbs, river crossings, miles of wildflowers, animal herds, wildlife, deserts, and an expanse of land too unforgiving to be loved by anyone on foot. But I doubt there is anywhere on this planet that should be as sacred for people who hate pavement.

This was filmed entirely on an Insta360 x4.

The songs are Yuve Yuve Yu, Wolf Totem, This is Mongol, and Biyelgee by the Mongolan band The Hu, and MONGOL from Mongolian rap group Fish Symbolled Stamp.

Notes for future Insta360 buyers: The suite is extremely buggy and trying to edit a 24 minute video on it is impossible. The transitions screw up, the deep track messes up the timeline, you can’t input photos without it screwing up the music, and because there is an auto snap for the videos, syncing to music is dang near impossible for long projects. Even if it didn’t do that, the export is in different time to the suite. No LUTs either. In future, I’ll be editing on Premier. This is the most work I’ve ever put into a video project and it’s not where I’d like, but it’s not like I can swap 17 hours of editing over to Adobe. So, it is what it is. Also, DO NOT BUY THOSE SCREEN GUARDS. Yeah, it’ll suck if you scratch your lens, but it also sucks that you ruin four whole days of shooting because the plastic creates static that attracts dust on THREE sides. I also didn’t have extra mount locations like behind and on the roll bars, and couldn’t shoot in 8k because of the space. So, kind of a waste to buy the newest model, but still got some cool stuff.