The city runs out fast. Then it is all steppe.
Which day trip actually gets you inside a ger. What the Semi-Gobi camel ride costs. Whether three days to Kharkhorin beats one long day at Terelj. Reviews of every tour you can book in Mongolia.
The statue, Terelj, the Semi-Gobi, and the three days beyond them.
Four bookings a first Mongolian trip is usually built from. What each one costs, and what the travellers who took it say.
01The first day outFrom Ulaanbaatar: Genghis Khan Statue NationalPark CamelRideThe forty-metre Khan on the Tuul plain, with a camel ride and a ger lunch on the way back.
02The Terelj dayA day trip to Terelj National Park and Statue of Chinggis KhanTurtle Rock, the temple up the ridge staircase, and the statue on the same run east.
03The Semi-Gobi day1 Day Semi-Gobi All-included tourDunes at Elsen Tasarkhai, close enough to do between breakfast and dinner. The real Gobi is days further.
04The three-day loopFrom Ulaanbaatar: Central Mongolia Guided 3-Day TourKharkhorin, the Orkhon valley and nights in a ger camp. The shortest trip that leaves the capital behind properly.
Terelj, Hustai or the Gobi. Pick how far you want to drive.
Everything worth seeing here is a drive. Three distances out of Ulaanbaatar, what boarding each one costs, and what is waiting at the end of it.
Start in Ulaanbaatar, then east to Terelj or south to the dunes.
Half the country lives in one city and the rest of it is in front of you. Six places to build a trip around, and the best day out in each.
Mongolia’s most-booked days out.
Every Mongolian tour we have reviewed →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
From Ulaanbaatar: Genghis Khan Statue NationalPark CamelRide
Travel from Ulaanbaatar to the Genghis Khan Statue Complex and Terelj National Park with an English-speaking guide such as Baga, Tom, D, or Dorj. Ride a camel, hold a hunting eagle, visit Turtle Rock and Aryabal Monastery, and eat a Mongolian lunch in a ger.
From · $86
Read our review →
2
Genghis Khan Statue Day Tour+National Park+Camel Ride+Eagle
from $49
3
From Ulaanbaatar: Central Mongolia Guided 3-Day Tour
from $400
4
Ulaanbaatar: Small Group 3-Day Best of Central Mongolia Tour
from $425
5
Terelj national park transport /Best price tour
from $36
6
Ulaanbaatar: Chinggis Khaan Statue and Turtle Rock Day Tour
from $59
7
Genghis Khan Tour – Mongolia’s #1 Daily Escape
from $49
8
Ulaanbaatar: Semi-Gobi Desert Day Trip & Camel Ride
from $175
Tsonjin Boldog, Kharkhorin, and a temple built into a hillside.
Mongolia keeps its history outdoors. A steel Khan on a plinth you climb up through, the stone walls and stupas of the old capital, and the rock shrines at Aglag an hour north of the city.
- 1From Ulaanbaatar: Genghis Khan Statue NationalPark CamelRidefrom $86
- 2Genghis Khan Statue Day Tour+National Park+Camel Ride+Eaglefrom $49
- 3Ulaanbaatar: Chinggis Khaan Statue and Turtle Rock Day Tourfrom $59
The horse is still the second half of this country.
A large part of Mongolia still moves with the seasons. You can ride out for an afternoon, milk a cow badly, sleep in a ger with the stove lit, and be handed a bowl of airag whether you asked for one or not.
What a day out in Mongolia actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. The gap between a day trip and a week on the road is wider here than in almost any country you have booked before.
City walks, the airport run, the performance ticket and the cheapest seat east to Terelj.
The full-day standards: the statue and Turtle Rock, Hustai at dusk, the Semi-Gobi dunes.
Multi-day loops with ger-camp nights, private jeeps and the long haul south to the Gobi.
Three things that only happen in Mongolia.
Steppe and desert run right across Central Asia. A horse that was never broken, a forty-metre Khan you climb up through, and a family that gives you the good side of the ger do not.
Takhi at Hustai
The takhi is the only horse never broken to a saddle. It went extinct in the wild in the 1960s and came back to Hustai from zoo stock in 1992, and the herds now graze the valleys about two hours west of the capital. They come down to water in the last hour of light, which is why the park trips leave so much later in the day than you expect.
- 1Day tour to Hustai national park★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 22 reviews
- 2From Ulaanbaatar: Day Trip to Hustai National Park★★★★★★★★★★ 3.8 · 21 reviews
- 3Private Day Tour in Hustai Nuruu National Park★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 19 reviews
Forty metres of stainless Khan
The statue stands where the story puts Temujin finding a golden whip. It is forty metres of stainless steel on a drum of thirty-six columns, and visitors go up inside the horse and out onto its head to look back down the Tuul valley. The museum in the plinth is worth the extra twenty minutes on the way out.
- 1From Ulaanbaatar: Genghis Khan Statue NationalPark CamelRide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 353 reviews
- 2Genghis Khan Statue Day Tour+National Park+Camel Ride+Eagle★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 261 reviews
- 3Ulaanbaatar: Chinggis Khaan Statue and Turtle Rock Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 132 reviews
A night with a herding family
A ger is one round room with a stove in the middle and beds around the wall, and the family will give you the good side of it. Expect suutei tsai with salt in it, dried curd hard enough to test a filling, and airag if the mares are milking. Take the bowl with your right hand and the afternoon gets much easier.
- 1Overnight Semi-Gobi Tour with Nomadic HomeStay★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 6 reviews
- 2Mongolia Nomad Trek • On-Foot & Horseback ~ 15 Day★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 5 reviews
- 35 day Central Mongolia and Nomad stay tour★★★★★★★★★★ 3.5 · 4 reviews
The Mongolian bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged from a hotel desk the night before. These run on a festival date, a short summer season, and camps that shut when the ground freezes.
- 01National Naadam Festival – 1 dayNaadam falls on the same days every July and the whole country stops for it. Beds and seats in Ulaanbaatar go months out.
- 02Ulaanbaatar: Semi-Gobi Desert Day Trip & Camel RideThe Gobi is an internal flight or two full days of driving from the capital, so the trip gets booked around a date rather than a mood.
- 03Day tour to Hustai national parkThe takhi come down to water at dusk and the park day is built around that hour. The vehicles that make it leave on time.
- 04From Ulaanbaatar: Central Mongolia Guided 3-Day TourThe ger camps out in the Orkhon valley open with the grass and close with the first hard freeze. Outside that window it is a colder, different trip.
- 05From Ulaanbaatar: Semi Gobi, Nomads, Ancient Kharkhorin TourKharkhorin is a long day west on one road. The trips that include Erdene Zuu run to the monastery’s own opening hours, not yours.
From November the ground is iron and the camps are shut.
Ulaanbaatar drops past minus thirty and the ger camps out on the steppe close for the season. The trip does not have to. The city keeps its monasteries and museums, a throat-singing stage, a kitchen that will teach you buuz, and the statue complex is heated all the way up.
Terelj is the steppe with a paved road to it.
An hour and a half east of the capital the ground stands up into granite. Turtle Rock, the Aryabal temple at the top of its staircase, horses for hire at every camp gate, and you are still back in the city for dinner.
Every Terelj day out →
The Gobi is mostly gravel, and then suddenly it is sand.
Khongoryn Els runs for well over a hundred kilometres and hums when the wind moves down it. The red cliffs at Bayanzag gave up the first clutch of dinosaur eggs anybody had seen. Between the two is a great deal of driving and a great deal of nothing, which is the point of going.
- 1Ulaanbaatar: Semi-Gobi Desert Day Trip & Camel Ridefrom $175
- 2From Ulaanbaatar: Semi Gobi, Nomads, Ancient Kharkhorin Tourfrom $280
- 31 Day Semi-Gobi All-included tourfrom $145
By place, city and steppe
Ulaanbaatar, Terelj, Kharkhorin, the Gobi: the run almost everybody does first.
The newest Mongolian tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Ulaanbaatar Signature Tour – Mongolia’s Capital in One Day
Read our review →
A Day Authentic Mongolian Trip near Ulaanbaatar all-inclusive
Read our review →
Private Tandem Paragliding Experience at Bayanzurkh Mountain
Read our review →
Mini Gobi and the ancient capital Kharkhorin – 4 days
Read our review →
Authentic Mongolian two days tours in Terelj & Khustai National P
Read our review →
