Traveling to Mongolia

Last fall, three friends and I traveled to Mongolia for 19 days - plus two days spent entirely in transit - and had a great time.  Mongolia isn't the first place most people think of for a vacation, and none of us remember how we got on the topic, but we'd been planning to go for several years (2016 was the first that worked out for all of us) and so we had plenty of time to do research in advance.

The road to Baga Gazariin Chuluu

We scoured the internet and made a list of all of the potential tour groups we found that seemed to offer a tour about the length we'd be interested in.  Then, we narrowed it down by price, scope, exact dates, customization options, and personal factors.  In the end, we settled on Dream Mongolia, specifically on a slightly extended version of their Discover Mongolia tour, which was one of the first tours I had ever looked at online.  Not only does the company offer customizable tours for any dates, they offer private tours to small groups at very reasonable prices, so you're not just thrown together with a bunch of strangers; it's completely owned and operated by Mongolians; and it's all-expenses-paid: lodging, meals, entry fees, gasoline, and bottled water.

View from Uran Volcano

The only thing not included is airfare - you have to get yourself to Ulaanbaatar, and then Dream Mongolia takes over.  The easiest ways to get there, from the United States, is through Korea, Japan, or China.  Having friends who had traveled to Mongolia before, they unilaterally recommended Korean and Japanese airlines - when someone else is footing the bill.  The fact is, flying through Beijing was almost $1,000 USD cheaper per person, round-trip, so that's what we did.  And you can fly to and transfer in Beijing without a visa, but the Chinese travel bureaucracy is every bit as annoying as the American one.  Because we had to change terminals, that meant getting a 24-hour travel visa to get through customs and security, then actually going through customs and security; taking the shuttle to the other terminal; back through customs and security, re-checking the bags; and waiting for our flight.  We had 7-hour layovers each way,  three hours of which was taken up exclusively with getting to our gate.

View from Ongi Temple

Our itinerary differed from the standard in that, with a few extra days, we drove to South Gobi instead of flying from Ulaanbaatar, so we detoured through Terelj National Park and got to adjust to life on (what passes for) the road in Mongolia.  Parts of the country - namely, around the capital - there are paved roads that would be recognized as such by foreigners.  Get more than an hour outside the capital, though, and the paved roads turn to dirt roads, which turn to dirt ruts, which turn to nearly trackless wilderness.  Our driver had been all over the country all summer, so he never got turned around, but there didn't seem to be many landmarks to navigate by, either, so consider yourself warned: if you're trying to drive across Mongolia, a map won't help you much.

Bayanzag - the Flaming Cliffs

Unfortunately, the lack of roads means even people that don't normally suffer from motion sickness are likely to feel it; I've always suffered from it pretty badly, so I brought a whole drug cocktail to keep it under control; everyone else got by mostly with ginger chews and occasionally borrowing a Dramamine or Bonine pill, but here's your second warning: no matter how sure you are you'll be fine, bring something to help with motions sickness; you will need it.

Hills by Terkhiin Tsagaan - the White Lake

On top of that, I managed to pick up a nasty cold at the Beijing airport; I had a hard time adjusting to the altitude due to being sick and constantly motion-sick; and, about 4 days in, we managed to get food poisoning.  All the travel guides will tell you "don't drink unfiltered water," "don't eat fresh veggies," "don't try the street food;" we did all of those things and were just fine.  Judging by who got sick and to what degree, it was a plate of well-cooked spicy goat meat that did it, and, in all our time there, the only meal that gave us trouble.

Camp near the Yol Valley

Unfortunately, it was enough trouble, for me at least, that when our next day saw us traveling through Dalanzadgad, the capital of Omnogovi province, our guide suggested we stop at the local hospital (which turned out to be more of a clinic) and I get some medicine, since I hadn't been able to eat anything since the previous afternoon.  It was a Sunday, unfortunately, so the clinic was mostly closed, but after some wandering around and asking for directions we managed to find a nurse who was willing to give me two bags of saline, some more anti-emetic medication, and some Indonesian medicated powder that tasted like the worst kind of fizzy orange drink and no amount of tea could dilute the taste out.  I wasn't up for much hiking the rest of the trip, but I did start to feel better, and here's some more advice for you: buy medical insurance before you go.  The entire afternoon's treatment ended up costing me about $30 USD, but I still got full reimbursement from my medical insurance, and you never know how expensive medical care will be.

View from the Khongor Sand Dunes

Nonetheless, we soldiered on, and even though it was the very end of August, we only had one really chilly night; filling our ger's stove with pinewood the following night turned out to be a mistake, when the night stayed mild and our tent got so hot we couldn't get to sleep until after midnight.  Four of us meant we could swap out who we bunked with different nights, though, since the standard tourist-camp gers only have 2 beds; one of the big fancy ones we stayed at near Lake Khuvsgul had 4 beds in it, but the camp only had one ger of that size, and we only stayed in it because the rest of the camp was empty.

Floodpath near Lake Khuvsgul

The tourist camps that we stayed at had more amenities than we had planned for - bathrooms with western-style showers and toilets, a large central dining and rec hall, and gers (yurts) with full amenities - usually two twin beds, some chairs and perhaps a small table, a woodstove for heat, and extra towels and blankets.  The food was quite good and diverse - much better than what we found in the Mongolian restaurants we visited - and the guides could set the menu ahead of time.  An Italian group that overlapped with ours the beginning of the trip got spaghetti and pasta for several nights; after the food poisoning, we found soup on our menu for several days; and with two of our group trying to eat vegetarian, we had less meat in our mixed dishes than usual.

In the Yol Valley

The end of August seemed like the perfect time to visit Mongolia - it was never crushingly hot, even in the Gobi, and although we had one cold night and a few cool days, we never needed more than a jacket.  It was the very end of tourist season, though, and it showed - by the middle of our trip, we were often the only group staying at the tourist camps, and the owners were often starting to pack up the empty gers for the winter.  By the end, the children had all gone off to towns or the capital city for school, which started on September 1st; our translator was a university professor, and never did tell us how he managed to schedule our tour to run a few days past the beginning of the term.

Riding near the Khongor Sand Dunes

I'm not sure what our driver did when he wasn't driving tourists around - I never heard him speak a word of English, but I suspect he understood it pretty well.  He knew a lot of people around the country, too, and would time our rest-stops to be by the gers and camps of people he knew, or take off in the evening after dropping us at tourist camps to visit people he knew.  Our guide, on the other hand, stayed at camp with us, chatted with the proprietors and the locals, and tried to teach us bits of Mongolian while he worked on his English (which was excellent; everyone's English was excellent in Mongolia).  When we taught him how to play Bananagrams, he insisted we play it every evening, and was thinking of developing a Mongolian version; we gave him our English one when we left, along with a few other gifts we'd brought along for our guide, driver, and various hosts: postcards and pictures of Alaska, key rings and hats, and candy for the kids and families.

The Mongolian Steppe

Despite all of our traveling - over 2,000 miles - we still only ended up seeing a fraction of the country; the Altai Mountains in the West are famous for the Kazakh hunters that live there, and birthplace of Genghis Khan is farther east of the capital than we ventured, so there's plenty to go back for someday.  While the tours, like ours, that include almost-constant travel can be exhausting, they're definitely the fastest and easiest way to see a lot of the country, and Mongolia has plenty worth seeing.

Amarbayasgalant Monastery