Monletsgolia are one of 340 teams taking part in the deliberately eccentric Mongol Rally.
The hutong go back almost 800 years and are in fact a Mongol invention.
Former employees say Ellison keeps a book on his desk about Genghis Khan, the ruthless Mongol warlord.
When the land-based routes became less accessible after the collapse of the Mongol empire, European traders sought a sea-based alternative.
There followed 250 years (1250-1500) during which Mongol invaders entered the mix and Islamic rule receded from Spain and spread to India.
It traces Temur's rise from obscurity in a small village in what is now Uzbekistan, but was then part of the fragmented Mongol empire.
The region currently occupied by Georgia was a well-beaten path for invading in armies in later centuries -- with Arab, Persian, Turkish and Mongol forces leaving their marks.
Land disputes between miners and Mongol herders became commonplace.
Drivers rev the motors of their beat-up vehicles, shouting in Chinese and Mongol for passengers to board for a 300-yard drive to the Chinese immigration center and then another few miles to the Mongolian equivalent.
Up until a couple of years ago this relatively isolated alley, surrounded by high-rise apartments in the western district of Xuanwu, was Beijing's oldest surviving alley, clocking in at a wheezing 900 years old and predating even the Mongol-designed hutong network.
Part Mongol, Roman, Arab, Spaniard, Mexican, '49er, the man who throws diamonds on the high trail is ready to sit in his saddle and settle in to the pokey, grunting, clopping rhythm of a pack train on the move.
One such was a medieval theologian, Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya, a sort of Muslim Luther who in reaction to the Mongol onslaught of the 13th century preached a return to the essentials of the faith, which the ulema (clerics) of the time had forsaken.
With a stunning series of campaigns, almost all of them directed against fellow Muslims, he first subdued Central Asia, then added to his dominions by conquering the Khanate of the Golden Horde, a vast territory stretching north into Russia and Ukraine, and the biggest of the Mongol fragments.
应用推荐