Alistair Carr swapped his mobile phone and his laptop for a backpack and a polar fleece, and set off for a country few Westerners had then visited. From travelling with reindeer herders to searching for dinosaur bones in the Gobi Desert, Carr's was an extraordinary journey. In clear, vivid language, he writes of his time in Mongolia with clarity, affection and insight. The Singing Bowl is a memorable and lovely account of a country that has been called, with truth, "a land of no strangers.