We were looking at our map of Mongolia before we left, tracing the major roads as they disappeared into the flat, brown topography only to re-emerge some two hundred kilometres away. What, we wondered, lay in that gap? How would you ever find the road again?

Fortunately our bus driver didn't share our line of philosophical enquiry; he was content to pick his way through half-formed tracks, choosing on each occasion the right one out of seven or eight running parallel, speeding us over bump, hole and ditch to Mandalgobi, on the northern edge of the Gobi desert.

Stocking up with as much water as we could carry (not enough), we travelled on into the arid semi-desert that covers most of the Gobi: like the apocryphal Eskimos' snow, Mongolians have about thirty-three words to describe different types of desert - only the southern-most tip of the desert is classical sand-dunes. The jeep dropped us off at our first stop, the home of a nomadic family. For the next seven days, we would be staying with different families scattered across a large swathe of the desert.

At first the only thing we met was a herd of goats, far more interested in their brother - who had managed to get trapped in the sawn-off oil barrel used for water - than they were in us. Presently a woman appeared in her traditional Mongolian dress: winkle-pickers and a leopard-print boob-tube. She invited us into her home.

Traditional Mongolian tents are called 'gers', or sometimes 'yurts' - the same word, but with two - equally imprecise - transliterations. As a language, Mongolian is notoriously difficult to pronounce, let alone transcribe. It is filled with a variety of guttural noises - described by one famous guidebook as two cats coughing at each other until one finally hacks up a furball - which are at times impossible to differentiate. An 'L' is slightly similar (and I stress 'slightly') to the double-l of Llanelli, but with an airy back-of- the-roof-of-the-mouth 's' thrown in. 'h', 'ch' and 'x' are also guttural, but even now I don't think I could describe the difference. Our facilitator in Mandalgobi (a man much shorter than Georgia's 4 feet 11 inches) had helpfully provided us with an extra language sheet, full of such useful and pertinent phrases as "I hope your goats/sheep/cows are fattening up nicely" and "Please may I have some more dried curds", of which more later. For the most part we managed to overcome the language barrier, except for the time we went on an impromptu ten kilometre hike with no water, thinking we were going to be shown the goats.

As you enter a ger - for they all have a similar format, with slight variations - there are metal beds on either side covered, like the walls and floor, in a souk-full of rugs and elegantly patterned fabrics. Opposite the door is a painted wooden chest, with a Buddhist shrine on the top. In some - larger, better-off - families, this was reserved for the family ger, with the main eating, living and guest-receiving ger having photographs of the family in large frames instead.

The stove (fuelled by animal dung - there's no wood near here) sits in the centre, between two supporting posts - painted, like all the wood, bright orange. The chimney leads up and out of the ger through the real focal point: the wheel that holds all of the roof posts in place. This was invariably beautiful, with an intricately carved centrepiece, often - incongruously - with a fish motif.

Other than this, there were some storage units - including, in one, a formica chest of drawers - on either side of the door and usually some form of entertainment in the far right-hand corner (yes, I know it's circular). There was almost a very neat technological progression as we moved through the gers: in the first ger, the entertainment was provided by a Chinese transistor radio, playing Chopin waltzes as we arrived; the next had just a horse-head fiddle; the one after had a DVD player and television - they watched, while we were there, re-runs of Christmas TV shows and extended highlights of the Nadaam Festival, a competition in the "three manly arts": archery, horse-riding and wrestling. The final two gers had satellite dishes, powered - understandably - by solar panels. The last of these had a teenage daughter who watched endless music videos of Mongolian pop, with a familiar, sullen expression.

Incidentally, Mongolian pop music is very good. Other than one rapper - so delighted that he had found a white picket fence in Ulan Bator, he decided to use it in all of his music videos - there are some great songs. Our particular favourite - and probably the Mongolian number one, given how often one hears it - is a duet between a high, pure soprano and a sonorous bass that uses the folk melodic style of the 'long song' (see later) with some squelchy Western pop chords underneath.

As our ger etiquette training had taught us, on entering a ger all guests proceed clockwise, never passing the shrine in the middle. As soon as you sit down, milk tea is poured from an enormous - wonderfully retro - floral thermos flask. The routine - and the food - never altered in the week: endless cups of warm, salty goats' milk with a dusting of tea leaves, an enormous bowl of dried curd slabs, solid and dark brown after a week in the sun, yoghurt scooped from a bucket in the corner, punctuated by the occasional bowl of dried goat pasta or bone soup.

We had picked up a travelling companion in Ulan Bator: an Irish girl called Flora who was making her way back to Dublin after two years' teaching in Japan. Although this may not be the best way for you all to meet her, it must be said that in the first ger, Flora - a look of manic politeness in her eyes - gorged herself on the big bowl of what we all still believed to be a very hard, terribly tangy cheese. Georgia and I were more circumspect with the curd, due more to nausea than any form of common sense. Sadly our approach was vindicated by Flora's frequent and rapid exits from our tent that night.

One point to bear in mind: if you have a gift for the family (in our case a bottle of vodka and a packet of Marlboro Reds, like the uncle you always wished you had), make sure that you give it to the family at the start of your stay, not the end. Otherwise you may, like us on one occasion, be presented with a very generous, but unwanted, bag of curds for the journey.

With our jeep now back in Mandalgobi, we travelled between gers using whatever mode of transport the family had available: sometimes by horse, sometimes walking and once by camel cart: literally, a cart attached to the back of a camel. Riding through the vast plains, with such experienced horsemen - they start children riding at three - was an experience so good that not even the discomfort caused by the wooden saddle could diminish it. The treks too - through awe-inspiring rock formations and ever-changing desert types - were wonderful: spotting faces in the rocks, visiting a shrine high up the cliff face.

Each journey was also memorable for the amount of music we heard. Despite the onset of Mongolia MTV, traditional songs can be heard everywhere - from street children in Ulan Bator to all of our guides through the desert - singing quietly to themselves as we moved along. In the gers too, we had the chance to listen to some wonderful 'long songs'. The 'long song' is so named not for its length, but for the intricate and florid ornamentation of the melodic line. They tend to be quite sad in content, but the atmosphere in which they're received is always a joyful one.

We also received two masterclasses in horse-head fiddle playing. The horse-head fiddle is the national instrument of Mongolia. With two horse hair strings, tuned a fourth apart, it has an ornately carved horse-head on the scroll. Usually, one string is used as a drone while the other string plays out the ethereal melodies. These can switch around during a song, giving a particularly nice effect when the upper (female) string is used as a drone, with the lower (male) string picking out the melody below.

On each occasion Georgia, nobly carrying her fiddle across the desert, returned the favour with a couple of slipjigs and an Irish air. In the case of the horse-head fiddlers, they were always keen to try out their skills on a European style fiddle.

Spending every hour with the family, rather than being inserted into a ger for a few token hours, meant that the children - invariably charming, wherever we stayed - soon gravitated towards us like a new addition to the family. Countless hours were spent playing football, or holding babies, depending on preference.

Families - and children in particular - seem very used to groups of people appearing and disappearing from their lives. Friendships are made quickly, over a game of ankle bones (with children) or a snort of snuff (with adults). The ankle bone games seemed to vary in each ger, but there were a couple of ones that we encountered everywhere. The playing pieces are a collection of sheeps' ankle bones; traditionally the more ankle bones you had in your collection, the wealthier you were. One game was like marbles, where you had to flick one bone onto another that had landed on the same side: there are four ways that the bone can land, each representing a different animal: sheep, goat, cow and the very sacred, highly prized horse.

Other forms of entertainment included a game of beach volleyball like no other - in the windiest part of the desert - and some games of chess for me, with a younger nomad (about 25). Without wanting to go into too many specifics, let us say that I learnt a lot in each of the seven games I played and lost. We could probably have played on, but I think he felt it was becoming discourteous to win so emphatically each time.

Like many of the younger people that we met in the families, he lived in Ulan Bator (he was an electrical engineer, not a nomad at all!). Some were studying, others had well paying jobs, but what was so surprising and impressive was how keen they were to maintain the nomadic traditions, spending most of their holidays back with their families.

It has been an exciting week: meeting so many people, learning so much about music and the nomadic way of life. It's a great way to finish our time in Mongolia and we will soon be off to China: first stop Beijing. Check back soon to see how we get on, or sign up to our mailing list and we'll let you know as soon as we update the website.