Northern Exposure
15 days from £6795 per person
Travel to one of the last truly wild corners of the planet on this two-week tour covering the highlights of north and central Mongolia.
Bayan-Olgii
Sandwiched between Siberia and China’s Xinjiang Province, the southwest of Mongolia, known as Bayan-Olgii, comprises a far-flung tract of mountains and empty grassland.
Ulaanbaatar
Mongolia’s modern capital, Ulaanbaatar, started life in the 17th century as a peripatetic monastery encampment of shacks and yurts, which moved every few years to different sites around the confluence of the Tuul and Selbe Rivers.
Khustain Nuruu National Park
This reserve to the southwest of Ulaanbaatar is one of only three places in the entire Mongolian steppe where you can still see pure, wild horses.
Khorgo Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur National Park
Deep in the heart of the Khangai Mountains lies this exquisitely beautiful freshwater lake, formed millions of years ago when lava flows blocked the Suman River, a tributary of the Chuluut.
Kharkhorin and the Orkhon Valley
The dramatic Orkhon Valley in central Mongolia, where the foothills of the Khangai Mountains peter into the steppes, served as the site of the Mongol capital before it moved to Peking in 1264.
Gobi Desert
A vast rain shadow formed by the blocking of clouds by the Himalayas, the Gobi dominates the southern half of Mongolia. Freezing in winter and blisteringly hot in summer, this is an inhospitable landscape of sun-scorched plains
The Tsaatan
To the west of Khovsgol Nuur, the empty Darkhad Depression is the homeland of Mongolia’s last reindeer herders, the Tsaatan: 44 families still live in the traditional nomadic way around this pine-speckled plain, moving five or six times each year between camps at different altitudes.
Bayan-Olgii
Sandwiched between Siberia and China’s Xinjiang Province, the southwest of Mongolia, known as Bayan-Olgii, comprises a far-flung tract of mountains and empty grassland. This is about as wild and remote as Asia gets: the landscape is spectacularly rugged, the climate unforgiving and infrastructure virtually non-existent.
Northern Mongolia
The far north of the country, towards the Russian border, comprises a vast tract of wild mountains and taiga stretching to Lake Baikal in Siberia.
