My grandson John and I flew to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to join a tour with Overseas Adventure Travel (oattravel.com). I had always wanted to visit Mongolia, imagining big skies, horses, great scenery, and interesting people. It was all of this and more. We were 12 all together and John, at 22, was by far the youngest.
I would certainly suggest visiting soon as life there is changing. Some families had older kids who had gone to the city, and it seemed that many young people did not want to follow a nomadic herder way of life. We were told that nomadic herder people today are given $65 per month by the government.
Impressions of Ulaanbaatar
Before we arrived, our guide reached out to everyone, making arrangements for various members of his family to collect us from the airport for a very reasonable fee. Traffic was unbelievable: It could take 15 minutes to move a mile. The airport is not far outside the very modern city, and it took us two hours to reach our hotel.
We stayed at the very nice, centrally located Best Western Premier Tuushin (tuushinhotel.com) then flew to different areas of the country.
In Ulaanbaatar, occasionally we were on our own for a meal. John and I kept returning to Gate 6 for an amazing eggplant and rice dish, and our total bill was usually about $13.
We enjoyed seeing a gigantic statue of Mongolia’s most famous nomadic leader, Genghis Khan, who unified the Mongol tribes in 1206.
Meeting Nomads, Monks, and Reindeer People
We had interactions with the reindeer people, a horse breeder, camel herders, nomadic yak herders, a shaman, a monk, a retired engineer now making and selling ice cream, and a Muslim family. We also visited two temples. At one we sat with a monk who shared stories of his life, and the other one was in Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, which had incredible geologic formations.
A demonstration by a falconry master was a special treat. To visit the reindeer people, we traveled by boat across a lake and were fewer than 100 miles from Siberia. The airport at the Gobi Desert and the Flaming Cliffs was undergoing maintenance, so we were driven 12 hours each way instead of flying. The group actually thought this was okay as we saw more of the country.
At the camps we split up into different vehicles, and drivers took us to see and experience what was nearby. During our time with the yak breeder family, we drove to a stream to help them fill their water jugs. In the rural areas, there were rarely roads. Drivers drove pell-mell across open country, sometimes racing each other.
Trip Details
The Overseas Adventure Travel trip of 19 days with air was $7,300 per person. OAT will give you credit for the air if you want to arrange it yourself, which we did, since we visited Greece and Turkey before Mongolia. Also, OAT often has specials.
When we stayed outside the city our lodging was always a yurt, called a ger in Mongolia. They were all very spacious and had a full bathroom with a shower attached. When I signed us up, it was the same price for us to have individual rooms and yurts, so we did that.
At the camps the food was good and varied. The meals were heavy on meat, with some unusual choices like horse, camel, and I think yak once, but there was always a vegetarian choice.
OAT suggested there wouldn’t be electricity everywhere, but there was, even in the yurts.
However, no one we visited was connected to the electrical grid except the Muslim family (likely the others used solar panels) and most did not have running water. They all seemed to have cell phones.
Patti Kelly
Colorado Springs, CO