Classic Mongolia in 10 days: Ulaanbaatar, Kharkhorin and the Gobi

The flight is the reason this works in ten days. Driving to the south Gobi and back costs four days of the ten. Flying one leg buys most of them back, and it is the single best value decision on any Mongolian itinerary.

Who it suits: first-time visitors and couples who want the country’s set pieces without three weeks. No walking harder than a sand dune. Long days in a vehicle on two of the ten.

Your specialist: Osnat Angerman or Paz Prosianoy, our Southeast and Central Asia specialists, working with our long-standing partner in Ulaanbaatar.

Day by day

Day 1: Arrive Ulaanbaatar. The airport is about 32 miles (52 km) south of the city and the transfer takes around an hour. Nothing else today.

Day 2: Ulaanbaatar. Gandantegchinlen monastery in the morning, with its 87 foot (26.5 m) gilded standing Buddha, which is a working monastery and busy with worshippers rather than visitors. The National Museum afterwards, which is the single most useful two hours of the trip because it explains everything you will see for the next week. The Choijin Lama temple museum, and Sukhbaatar Square. Late afternoon at a throat singing and long song performance, which sounds like a tourist item and is not.

Day 3: Ulaanbaatar to Kharkhorin. Five to six hours west on a mostly paved road, which is the easiest driving day of the trip. Stop at Khustai National Park on the way if you want to look for takhi, the wild Przewalski’s horse, which was extinct in the wild and reintroduced here from 1992. Arrive at your camp in the Orkhon valley for the evening.

Day 4: Kharkhorin and the Orkhon valley. Erdene Zuu monastery in the morning, built in 1586 from the stones of the abandoned Mongol capital, walled by 108 stupas. The Kharkhorin museum, which is small and good. Afternoon riding in the valley, one to two hours led, or a walk up onto the ridge for the view over the river.

Day 5: Orkhon valley to Ulaanbaatar. Back east, five to six hours, with a stop at Elsen Tasarkhai, a strip of dunes on the way that gives you a camel ride if you want one. Night in the city, which is also where you repack for the flight.

Day 6: Fly to Dalanzadgad, drive to Yolyn Am. A short flight south, then two hours by road into the Gurvan Saikhan mountains. Yolyn Am is a narrow gorge that holds ice into July in a good year, walked in about ninety minutes each way on a flat gravel path. Camp in the Gobi.

Day 7: To the Khongoryn Els dunes. Four to five hours west on tracks. This is your first real Mongolian driving day and it is not a road. The dunes run about 110 miles (180 km) and rise to roughly 1,000 feet (300 m), and you climb one at sunset, which takes forty minutes of hard work in soft sand and is the best hour of the trip. A camel ride at the foot of them beforehand, on Bactrian camels, walking pace.

Day 8: Dunes to Bayanzag. Four to five hours north east across the gravel plain. Bayanzag, the red cliffs where Roy Chapman Andrews found the first identified dinosaur eggs in the 1920s, at the end of the afternoon when the light is on them. Camp nearby.

Day 9: Bayanzag to Dalanzadgad, fly to Ulaanbaatar. Three hours by road to the airstrip, then the flight north. Afternoon in the city: the cashmere shops, the state department store, and a proper dinner. This is also the buffer, because if the flight moves, this day absorbs it.

Day 10: Departure. Transfer to the airport.

What is included

All accommodation, hotel in Ulaanbaatar and ger camps in the countryside, full board outside the capital and breakfast in it, a private vehicle with a Mongolian driver for every leg, an English-speaking Mongolian guide throughout, both domestic flights, all park and museum entries, the camel ride, the led horse riding at Kharkhorin, a day-by-day document with real drive hours and the bathroom arrangement stated for every night, and a WhatsApp group with your specialist and our partner’s operations team, network permitting.

What we would change, and when

• Want more Gobi? Add two nights and include Ongi monastery ruins and a herder family stay. Ten becomes twelve.
• Want to skip the flights? It is possible to drive the whole thing and it costs four days. Fourteen days by road covers what ten does with flights, and you see far more of the country from the window. The 14 day route does exactly that.
• Travelling as four? The price per person falls sharply because the vehicle and the guide are shared. Tell us and we will requote.
• Naadam in your window? 11 to 13 July fills every hotel in Ulaanbaatar. We would either build the trip around it properly or move your city nights out of that week. The festival route is here.

Honest notes

The season is short. This route runs from mid-June to mid-September and not meaningfully outside it. In May and October camps are closed or opening late and nights are near freezing. From November to April the tourist camps are shut and this itinerary does not exist.

Ger camps have shared bathrooms on most of these nights. A shower and toilet block a short walk from your ger, with hot water at set hours. Two of the camps on this route have private bathrooms attached to the gers and cost more, and we will show you both options with the prices side by side.

Driving days are long and the surfaces are not roads. Days 7 and 8 are four to five hours each on open tracks at 20 to 30 miles an hour. It is bumpy for hours. If you have back problems, tell us and we will change the vehicle and shorten the days.

Domestic flights change. Small aircraft, thin seasonal schedules, a baggage allowance around 15 kg and a real chance of a time change. Day 9 is deliberately soft for that reason.

Camp food repeats. Mutton, noodles, potatoes, soup and dumplings. It is fine and it is monotonous by day six. Vegetarians should tell us early and should bring snacks.

Nights are cold in every month. Freezing in the Gobi in June is normal. The stove goes out around two in the morning.

Built by our Southeast and Central Asia specialists, with our long-standing partner in Ulaanbaatar.

Related

• Mongolia: the complete guide
• Mongolia with children in 10 days
• Gobi and central Mongolia in 14 days