Mongolia

Ulaanbaatar — the world’s coldest capital city (average annual temperature -1.3°C) and the most rapidly growing, with 1.5 million people (45% of Mongolia’s total population) and the Gandan Monastery (the largest functioning Buddhist monastery in Mongolia, 1838, with the 26.5m standing Migjid Janraisig statue — a golden figure reconstructed after Soviet-era destruction).

💡 The Soviet Union destroyed 700+ Mongolian Buddhist monasteries between 1937 and 1939, killing 18,000 monks. Gandan Monastery was the only one allowed to remain (as a show monastery for foreign visitors); all others were demolished or converted to military barracks, granaries and museums. 60,000 monks were executed or sent to Siberia. Mongolian Buddhism has been recovering since 1990.

100km from UB. Hustai (Khustain Nuruu) National Park — the site of the world’s most successful Prózevalski horse (takhi, Equus ferus przewalskii) reintroduction — the last truly wild horse, extinct in the wild by 1969, reintroduced from zoo populations (12 individuals from Mongolian and European zoos) beginning in 1992. Now 400+ individuals in self-sustaining herds.

💡 The Prózevalski horse is genetically distinct from all domestic horse breeds (it has 66 chromosomes vs the domestic horse’s 64) and was never domesticated in the conventional sense. The Hustai reintroduction, working with 12 captive-bred individuals from the Munich and Prague zoos, is the most complete large mammal rewilding from extinction in history.

80km from UB. Terelj National Park — the most visited Mongolian national park, with dramatic granite formations (Turtle Rock, the “Bishop” and the Old Man Reading a Book — natural rock shapes given Mongolian names), eagle hunters with their golden eagles, and ger (yurt) camps in the valley for the authentic nomadic overnight experience.

💡 Golden eagle hunting (berkutchi) is practised by the Kazakh minority in western Mongolia — the eagles are caught as nestlings, trained over 3–7 years to hunt foxes and rabbits, then released back to the wild. The Golden Eagle Festival in Ulgii (October) showcases the tradition; eagle hunters come from Terelj to demonstrate for visitors year-round.

2h flight from UB to Dalanzadgad. The Gobi Desert — the largest desert in Asia (1.6 million km², spanning southern Mongolia and northern China) is not a sand sea but a cold, rocky high-altitude plateau (1,000–1,500m). The Khongoryn Els (the Singing Dunes — 800m-high sand dunes that produce an audible moaning sound in certain winds), the Yolyn Am ice canyon (a narrow slot canyon that retains ice year-round), and the Flaming Cliffs.

💡 The Flaming Cliffs (Bayanzag — “the rich saxaul forest”) are the site where American palaeontologist Roy Chapman Andrews discovered the first dinosaur eggs in 1922 — 80 million-year-old Protoceratops eggs in a Cretaceous desert. The Gobi was a desert even then; the dinosaurs’s eggs were buried in dunes where they fossilised.

The Flaming Cliffs at sunset (the orange sandstone turns deep red as the sun falls — Andrews’s description gave them their name), a ride on Bactrian camels (Camelus bactrianus — the two-humped camel of Central Asia, different from the Arabian one-humped dromedary, built for extreme cold as well as desert heat) across the Khongoryn Els dunes.

💡 The wild Bactrian camel (Camelus ferus) — genetically distinct from the domestic Bactrian — is critically endangered with fewer than 1,000 individuals remaining, making it rarer than the giant panda. The last populations live in the Mongolian and Chinese Gobi. It can survive on saltwater and can withstand temperatures from -40°C to +40°C.

2h flight from Dalanzadgad to Mörön (4h north of UB). Khövsgöl Lake (136km long, 36km wide, 2.7% of the world’s unfrozen fresh surface water, the second-deepest lake in Asia — 262m) — bordered by taiga forest, with Tsaatan (Reindeer People) communities living on the northern shores herding reindeer.

💡 Lake Khövsgöl contains 2% of the world’s unfrozen fresh surface water — the same order of magnitude as Lake Baikal in Russia (which contains 25%). The lake is part of the same tectonic system as Baikal; the water is drinkable directly from the surface. The Mongolian shamanic tradition regards it as the home of 77 spirits.

A full day with the Tsaatan (Dukha) community on the lake shore — a community of approximately 500 people who herd reindeer in the taiga, living in teepee-like urts rather than gers, using reindeer for transport, milk and meat. They are the southernmost reindeer herders on earth and one of the most isolated communities in Asia. Fly from Mörön (MXV) to Ulaanbaatar for international connections.

💡 The Tsaatan (Dukha, “those who have reindeer”) are believed to have migrated from Tuva (Russia) approximately 200 years ago — their lifestyle, language and spiritual practice are closely related to Siberian shamanic traditions. The reindeer are not merely livestock but companions and spiritual intermediaries. The community numbers fewer than 500 people; their tradition is at risk from climate change.