Live the Nomadic Life on a Tour Through Mongolia
On an early morning hike in Mongolia’s Uvurkhangai region, I head towards a wildflower-dotted valley where I’ve been told I might encounter the country’s famous wild horses. I squeeze gently through scrums of oblivious sheep and goats and leap over swathes of lilac and white blooms. All is tranquil. Until I attempt to part a herd of sheep being tended to by a local nomadic shepherd.
The next part is a blur: a hand on my arm, scissors placed in my palm and a rudimentary “shear the sheep” motion – an invitation to transition from observer to participant in the life of a herder. I squat, do my best with the kitchen scissors and politely turn down repeated offers of shimiin arkhi, a liquor produced from fermented cow’s milk.
Finding myself knee-deep in fleece isn’t a complete surprise. I’m on the 14-day Nomadic Mongolia tour with G Adventures, a return journey from the capital, Ulaanbaatar, which taps into the time-honoured lifestyle still maintained by some 30 per cent of the population. The itinerary includes visits to Yolyn Am, an ice-gripped gorge in the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains; the singing sand dunes of Khongoryn Els in the Gobi Desert; the Flaming Cliffs (Bayanzag), a renowned palaeontology site in the desert; a stay with a family in Uvurkhangai; and the ancient city of Kharkhorin.
Most of my 13 fellow guests – effervescent personalities ranging from a Cardiff lawyer in her mid-30s to a 70-something retiree from Colorado – are travelling solo and our days are active. We hike alongside yaks on gargantuan ice sheets, trek up 300-metre sand dunes, attempt to herd those spirited sheep and craft cheese from goats we’ve milked. Almost every adventure is bookended with a stay in a traditional ger (yurt) camp. These vary in size and amenities but we sleep in twin beds topped with cosy quilts and wool blankets, warmed by a roaring fire.
Largely led by younger travellers seeking a new frontier, as well as the government’s decision to secure visa-free access for 34 more countries, tourism is booming in Mongolia. A record 640,000 visitors arrived in 2023 (more than double the 2022 figures) and the country’s goal is to hit one million by the end of this year. The locals give a warm welcome when we roll up to any new village in our convoy of Mitsubishi Delicas, taking the opportunity to practise their English or place before us mountains of khuushuur (fried mutton-filled pockets) and tsuivan (a noodle stew heavy with sheep-tail fat).
You don’t come here for luxury hotels, ritzy cocktail bars and high-end restaurants. They exist, certainly, in single-digit figures in the capital, where shiny modern high-rises are emerging above a skyline dominated by crumbling Soviet-era buildings and ancient Buddhist temples. Instead, you come here for the wide open spaces, from towering sand dunes to green valleys, and to enjoy performances by throat vocalists and musicians playing morin khuur (a traditional stringed instrument). As well as my crash course in sheep shearing, I sip tea with master camel herders, join in on vodka-fuelled karaoke sessions and go on dinosaur-fossil hunts. I learn to carve shivs in the desert while tiny lizards run around my feet, realise how handy an umbrella is for “bush wees” in a landscape devoid of shrubbery and appreciate the importance of sieving goat hair from cream before you cook it in a stove that’s fuelled by dried cattle dung.
For one of my fellow travellers, Sarah, the highlight isn’t the landscapes or wildlife but the locals, who are eager to share snippets of their lives with newcomers. “Even with a language barrier, there is a kindness, a level of hospitality that I’ve never experienced before,” she says. “You might initially come for the wilderness but you’d come back for Mongolia’s people.”
