It’s right there, on the second page of Mykel Board’s travel offering, Even A Daughter Is Better Than Nothing: a photographic hint that his stay in Mongolia isn’t going to result in the same old sanctimonious cultural dissection we’re used to reading by travel writers.

You can make out the back of a man, lying on his side, arm slung over a low, taut rope. The impression is of someone either drunk, or knocked out. The background is black, apart from what looks like a window grate to the outside world. Immediately, just like Board’s title, you’re impatient to know what they hell this is all about.

Be prepared to feel like the guy on the ropes. Slightly dazed by Board’s year of teaching Mongolians the final points of American slang.

Shrugging off the mow clichéd travel writing convention of picking a weird title to only then keep the reader wondering until halfway through the book, Board comes out with it in the first two paras – the title alluding to a Mongolian proverb.

As for the photo – I’m still wondering. As I am about Mongolia after reading the book. Not that Board leaves much uncovered, just that it seems few travel journalists who have written about the central Asian nation have been willing to get to its core by precisely not trying to get to its core, or explain its pleasures and incumbencies.

Board just rocks up, ostensibly to teach Ameri-English, and proceeds to wade through everything that is ‘normal’ in Mongolia. In fact it seems Mongolians have a lot in common with Americans – they like to drink, swear and watch wrestling. They go to bars, they have heavy metal rock bands, and they take weekend trips to the country. Well, the Gobi – kinda similar.

Then there’s the wrestling, drinking, wrestling, suffering an avalanche of incomprehensibles, drinking, being unwillingly stuffed full of sheep’s’ innards (entrée, main and dessert), wrestling and drinking. And in Board’s case not getting laid. Not even by randy fellow volunteers, let alone by his sometimes promiscuous students.

Board’s dissection of his time in Mongolia is in some respects your typical foreigner coping in a foreign culture tale, alternatively hating it, wishing they were home, or anywhere else, and espousing why the Mongolians’ way of life, and attitudes, are so superior to Western ways. As seen through a cloud of vodka.

Board is alternatively pissed off at all the Western cultural invasions, and amazed by the way the Mongolians uniquely bolt them on to their ancient culture to form a fascinating hybrid.

Essentially, this is a sex (by anyone other than Board), drugs, rock’nroll (and wrestling, often together) tour of Mongolia. And for Board’s recounting, the country as an alluring travel destination is richer for it, albeit in a slightly sadomasochistic kind of way. I can’t wait for his trip to Turkmenistan.

Board’s ride is both bumpy and sometimes a little tedious in its repetition – he often telegraphs his punches, but then as with the beginning of his book, he’s upfront about it. By the end I considered the book a worthy read, if only in the vein of a daughter being better than nothing.