MONGOLIA · LAND OF BLUE SKY
The steppe, the Gobi, and the endless blue sky.
Day trips and overland journeys out of Ulaanbaatar: the Genghis Khan statue, Terelj’s granite valleys, the Gobi dunes, nomad camps and the long roads into the grasslands beyond.
Only in Mongolia
Three things you can’t do anywhere else.
Grasslands, mountains and big skies turn up in plenty of countries. These three don’t. The colossus, the Gobi, the saddle. Each one belongs to this stretch of inner Asia and nowhere else. Build the rest of the trip around them.
On the steppe
The Genghis Khan Colossus
Forty metres of gleaming stainless steel, mounted on a horse the size of a building. It is the largest equestrian statue on earth, raised where legend says the young Temujin found a golden whip. A lift carries you up through the horse’s mane to a deck on its head, and you look out over the same grassland the Mongol empire rode out of.
- 1 From Ulaanbaatar: Genghis Khan Statue NationalPark CamelRide
- 2 Genghis Khan Statue Day Tour+National Park+Camel Ride+Eagle
- 3 Ulaanbaatar: Chinggis Khaan Statue and Turtle Rock Day Tour
In the Gobi
The Flaming Cliffs
The Gobi is not endless sand. It is gravel plain, singing dunes and the rust-red cliffs of Bayanzag, where the first dinosaur eggs ever found were lifted out of the sandstone in the 1920s. Two-humped Bactrian camels still carry herders between the wells. Few deserts on the planet pack this much into one horizon.
- 1 Ulaanbaatar: Semi-Gobi Desert Day Trip & Camel Ride
- 2 From Ulaanbaatar: Semi Gobi, Nomads, Ancient Kharkhorin Tour
- 3 1 Day Semi-Gobi All-included tour
In the saddle
Riding the Open Steppe
Mongolia keeps more horses than it has people, and children ride before they can properly walk. Out here you can spend a day in the saddle the way the country always has: across treeless grassland to a herder’s ger, or between the dunes on a shaggy Bactrian camel. No fences, no trail markers, just the open country.
- 1 Horseback Riding Tour to Turtle Rock & Aryabal
- 2 Terelj National Park: Tour with horse riding and hiking
- 3 Horse riding experience in Terelj National park 1 day
The essential day out
If you only leave the city once.
Most travellers base in Ulaanbaatar and ride out for the day. This is the one almost everyone books first: the steppe, up close, a couple of hours from the capital.
The classics
Mongolia's Most Popular Tours
The Genghis Khan statue, Terelj’s granite valleys, the Gobi dunes and the road to Kharkhorin. The trips most travellers come to Mongolia for.
By region
Pick where to roam.
Ulaanbaatar for the monasteries and the markets. Terelj for granite peaks an hour from town. The Gobi for dunes and Bactrian camels. Kharkhorin for the empire’s old heart.
By experience
Or pick how you want to travel.
Ride out on a horse or a camel. Sleep in a nomad’s ger. Trek the hills, or hand the driving to someone who knows the tracks. Then choose your run by length, from a single day to a week on the road.
An hour from the city
Where Ulaanbaatar ends.
Giant granite tors, the balancing Turtle Rock, a meditation temple built into the hillside and herders grazing horses in the valleys. Terelj is the steppe at its most reachable, just past the city limits. The three we’d send you on first.
The imperial heartland
Into the old empire.
Kharkhorin was Karakorum, the seat the Mongol khans ruled half the known world from. Erdene Zuu, the country’s oldest monastery, still stands on its walls, and the Orkhon valley around it is open steppe and quiet rivers. Our pick of the longer roads west.
Up close
The Mongolia people travel for.
A night in a felt ger with a herding family, throat singing and the horse-head fiddle after dark, buuz dumplings folded by hand at the stove. The country’s warmth is easiest to meet around a stranger’s table. Three easy ways in.
When to go
Mongolia changes with the season.
The same valley is emerald in July and snow-white in January. When you come decides which Mongolia you get, and what’s worth building the trip around.
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