Ten kilometres — mostly gravel — above a lake that spends five months of the year frozen thick enough to drive a truck across.

The route opens by dropping to the water — two easy kilometres down to 1,647 metres, the surface of Khövsgöl itself, and about as low as this corner of Mongolia gets. From there it turns and starts working. Six kilometres of steady climbing follow the northern shoreline, gaining nearly ninety metres at a gradient that never exceeds 4%.

The reward is the high point at km 8, with the lake stretched out below and the Siberian border ridge on the horizon. Then the road falls away — eighty metres in the last two kilometres — mostly on asphalt — straight back down to the shore in Khankh.