"After them, after them!” shouts my passenger, gesticulating furiously. Although I can only guess that's what he's shouting—in Mongolian. I turn our Infiniti SUV off the dirt track and into the naked Gobi Desert, chasing after our quarry: two nomads on a single motorcycle, herding two double-humped camels. The group is moving hard and fast.

We give chase, bouncing over brush and dirt, honking the horn madly. The riders hear us, finally, and slam to a stop. The camels also halt, seemingly bored. My Mongolian guide leans out the window: We’re getting directions.

We’re seeking to rejoin a caravan of trucks and a crew of 40 somewhere in the western Gobi, a stretch of khaki-colored plains so vast the eye struggles to find the horizon line. Only problem: no maps, GPS signal, or road signs. It’s like being far out at sea, distant purple-tinted mountains the only landmark. There aren’t even power lines or fences to interrupt the sweep of land. Mirages waver over the dust and dirt and smudges on the horizon eventually morph into camels as we approach.

The nomads, thankfully, nod and point toward a swell of hills. Our people are that way. After nine hours of driving across the desert, gas and water supplies are low.

Any road trip through Mongolia would be an epic affair. With China to the south and Russia to the north, the country is still a place of wilds untamed, from wolves in the Ural mountains to the thirsty expanses of the Gobi, where necessary supplies always travel with you. It’s not the kind of trip you take with a guidebook, a smartphone, and some confidence. Local guides and drivers are a necessity.

But even by Mongolian standards, this adventure is a kid’s fever dream: We’re hunting for dinosaur bones with an elite team of Mongolian paleontologists and members of the Explorers Club, Hong Kong chapter, who are searching for new fossil sites. The Gobi has given up many of the world’s most famous dinosaur bones, featured in institutions like the American Museum of Natural History. We may even assist in the next chapter of important finds—if only we can find that damn caravan.

Some of the world's most famous dinosaur fossils have been found in the Gobi Desert. Michael Sakas

Two days ago I landed in Ulaanbaatar, the 4,300-foot-high capital city located in the central north. Thanks to a mining boom, its downtown includes new skyscrapers and countless coffee shops. But a two-hour flight by prop plane took me 360 miles south—and to a much older era—landing in Dalanzadgad and the Gobi proper. Out here, even the airport lacks an asphalt road leading to it. Instead the desert is criss-crossed by two-wheeled tracks scored into the hard-packed dirt. On occasion we see Soviet-era 4x4 vans, creaky motorbikes, and small and sturdy Mongolian horses, each moving at its own pace.

Our path roughly follows that of one of the world’s most famous explorers and naturalists, Roy Chapman Andrews. Andrews was famous in his day as an outsized adventurer and the director of the Museum of Natural History. In the early 1920s he breached the Gobi by using “motor cars,” the first time a serious scientific expedition deigned to do such a thing. It led them far enough afield to reach the now famous Flaming Cliffs, where they discovered fossilized dinosaur eggs, conclusively proving that dinosaurs were reptiles. The character of Indiana Jones is almost certainly based on Andrews—fedora, pistol on hip, and all.

I’m just beginning to think we’ll never find our colleagues when we crest a rise and see a large raised expedition tent, a collection of small personal red tents, and a cadre of SUVs. It’s the Infiniti Horizon Base Camp—a cheeky reference to the expedition’s sponsor and vehicle supplier, the Hong Kong-based Infiniti car company. The camp isn’t much by glamping standards—no toilets, running water, or Wi-Fi—but to us it’s a happy sight that promises food, friends, and lukewarm Chinggis lager (named after Mongolia’s infamous 12th-century leader).