Mongolia

August 2, 2025

I booked a 17-day trip to Mongolia on pretty short notice, less than two weeks before I was due to depart. In late June, I’d quit my job and was clearing my paid time off, and had originally intended to head to Japan for a motorcycling trip—something that I’d wanted to do since a few months back when I obtained my final motorcycle license—but abandoned those plans for a few reasons. Renting a motorcycle in Japan was more expensive than I expected (think about S$120 a day for a machine in the 600–900 cc category, which you could get a pretty nice four-wheeler for); it was both rainy and hot these few months in Japan; and I’d already been to Japan twice last year, most recently spending three weeks there in December.

So I decided it was time to do something a little different. Mongolia was a destination I’d thought about on-and-off for a few years, though I’d never done any serious research, and it wasn’t somewhere I actually considered at first while thinking about this trip. Given the short timeframe that I had to plan, I initially decided to go for a fully guided, all-inclusive tour and looked at a few G Adventures itineraries (I’d travelled with them a few times before and generally had good experiences), and shortlisted Mongolia and South Africa.

I ended up booking a 15-day tour with Golden Gobi, a local guesthouse/tour operator (the additional two days are travel/buffer days). While researching more on the two potential destinations, Mongolia resonated more strongly with me (it’s also the perfect season to travel Mongolia right now), and I also learnt that the “recommended” way to travel Mongolia was to book through a local tour operator. These tours are also fully guided and all-inclusive, and are of course much cheaper than going through international tour operators like G Adventures. I emailed a few local tour operators and for options and pricing before settling on the Golden Gobi itinerary.

All in, this trip cost me just under S$4,000, which is probably about S$2,000 less than what I would’ve spent with G Adventures. The tour itself was US$1,725 (~S$2,215) total (it’s a standard rate of US$115 a day), and the fairly last-minute flight tickets with Air China set me back S$1,260. The last S$500 of spending covered insurance, additional accommodations, and miscellaneous expenses during the trip (mostly vodka).

Day 0

I departed Singapore for Mongolia’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar on the evening of 12th July. Despite the somewhat steep price, both my outward and return flights were red-eye flights and required a connection through Beijing. There were no nonstop commercial flights I could have taken, though there’s now a direct route launching in a few months’ time.

I arrived in Ulaanbaatar late in the morning of the 13th. The airport, Chinggis Khaan International Airport, is pretty new and quite empty. The Beijing–Ulaanbaatar leg had only about 10–20% of the seats filled, and interestingly enough, the immigration line for foreign visitors was a lot shorter than for Mongolian citizens (either way, getting through immigration was a breeze). From there I met a driver that Golden Gobi had arranged for, and he took me to the guesthouse where I was to stay for the night before beginning the tour proper the next day. The fare was US$30, which is about the standard rate for the hour’s drive (in light traffic) from the airport into the city centre.

The driver spoke some English and he told me that the Japanese emperor was about to conclude a visit to Mongolia, which explained why there seemed to be some sort of guard of honour stationed on the airport tarmac when I’d arrived. We passed by the emperor’s convoy travelling the other direction while on our way into the city.

Some quick facts about Mongolia: It has a population of 3.5 million (60% of Singapore’s), half of which live in the city of Ulaanbaatar, with a land area of 1.5 million square kilometres (2,100% of Singapore’s). In other words, outside of Ulaanbaatar, the population density is so low that it’s equivalent to Singapore having only 700 people.

Inside Ulaanbaatar, though, it’s a pretty ordinary city, if a bit decrepit. The roads and buildings are not in the best condition (in stark contrast to the airport), with a lot of graffiti, and I’d wager that much of the infrastructure has been around since the communist era pre-1990. This was also the case for the building that the guesthouse was located in, which was a weathered three-storey yellow terrace. Fortunately, the interior was quite nicely furnished. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of the interior. Narrow corridors, small rooms, and a rather squeezy reception meant that navigating my fairly large body and suitcase around was a bit of a hassle. Still, I was able to check-in and settle some administration for the tour without too much trouble.

I usually avoid hostels because I really don’t like being shoved into a cramped space with a bunch of strangers, but arranged to spend the first night here because it felt appropriate for me to acclimatise to less comfortable living conditions. During the tour, we would be spending the nights in either a ger, which are known for having very hard beds, or a tent, which are known for not having any beds. Either way, there would be no running water or power, so the hostel with its sinks, power outlets, and toilet bowls was still a step up.

I spent the rest of the day changing the USD cash that I’d brought to the local currency, Mongolian Tugriks, buying a local SIM card, and trying to catch some sleep. I have a lot of difficulty sleeping on flights and the previous night was no exception. Unfortunately, the hostel room I was in was very stuffy with lots of noise, so the best I could do was a couple of very brief naps in the afternoon.

I’d had a lot to eat the previous day plus two meals on my two flights here, so I skipped lunch and had a quick dinner at a nearby western food place (I figured I’d have a lot of opportunities to eat more local food over the next fortnight) before hitting the sack. I’d hoped that it’d get cooler in the room as the sun went down, but the room seems remarkably well-insulated (understandable, since it gets down to -40 degrees in winter). It was uncomfortably warm but I was nevertheless able to get to sleep some time after 11 p.m.

Day 1

The tour was scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., and I met the rest of my group after a quick breakfast. Here’s the cast:

• A, our tour guide
• B, our driver
• R and M, a couple from Switzerland travelling across central Asia
• T, a Belgian student of Chinese descent on holiday

For some reason, I chose to introduce myself as “Xu” to the rest of the them. I’m not very sure why, because I’ve never used that name with anyone else before. I think I was half-asleep and just panicked when someone asked for my name, and gave the easiest thing to pronounce I could think of.

The first day was mostly driving. We travelled north out of Ulaanbaatar towards Amarbayasgalant Monastery, stopping briefly at the edge of the city to shop for supplies, and then again around 2 p.m. near the town of Darkhan to have lunch. Lunch was at a roadside “kitchen ger”, which is a ger with a few tables set up near a road or intersection where you can order some of the local dishes.

This was our first local meal (at least for me), and we had Mongolian pasta with Khuushuur. Mongalian pasta is some kind of dry noodles with meat (it’s not actually the pasta you might think of), and Khuushuur is a flat, almost pancake-like dumpling with a meat filling (it doesn’t take you long to realise that the common theme across all the local dishes is meat). Apparently, Mongolians also like to add Maggi sauce or ketchup to their food, though I found this meal to be sufficiently well-seasoned by itself. (Unfortunately I didn’t make a habit of taking pictures of my meals, so you’ll have to make do with your imagination here and further down.)

After some 320 km of driving on asphalt, we went offroad for about an hour or two to cover the final distance to the monastery. It was bumpy but, as I’d come to realise later on in the trip, wasn’t so bad as far as offroad roads go.

A brought us around the monastery and explained some of its history and the Buddhist practices in Mongolia (it’s the primary religion here). It’s quite a large complex, with the central section measuring maybe 200 m on each of its sides. Some hundred years ago it was much larger, but most of the outer temples were destroyed during communist purges, and today only the central section remains along with some one or two outer buildings.

Accommodations for the night was at a no-frills ger beside the temple (there was a fairly large encampment with probably almost a hundred gers/houses in total). There were beds but not really any bedding to speak of, and each of us was given a sleeping bag to use on the bed. There were pillows on the beds but the pillowcases didn’t seem like they were changed with any sort of regularity, so I used an inflatable pillow that I’d brought along. No showers or proper toilets, but I was already mentally prepared for that. The “toilet” is just a outhouse/pit latrine (of course there’s a Wikipedia page for that…), though it seemed pretty clean and didn’t smell (I think it’d just been freshly dug/built).

My group decided to take a short hike to a golden temple and Buddha statue located uphill of the main monastery. Though the sun was beating down quite strongly, the fairly cool temperature plus gentle grade made the hike quite easy.

Despite the less-than-stellar facilities, the view and vibe of the place was stunning. I got by with two pieces of body wipes for a “shower”, and was able to floss and brush with a small quantity of bottled water before turning in for the night.

I was able to fall asleep without too much trouble, but sleep quality wasn’t great. The bed was hard and the sleeping bag limited my movement, so I woke up with a very stiff back and shoulders. I’d kept myself zipped up inside the sleeping bag for fear of getting bitten by mosquitoes or catching a cold, but after that first night I thought I’d just use the sleeping bag as a blanket afterwards.

Day 2

We had breakfast around 8:30 a.m. (A did some cooking, as she had also for dinner last night) and set off shortly soon after. I’d gotten up at 7 a.m. and used the spare time to do some packing and reading.

Like yesterday, today was mostly driving. We headed west and stopped to resupply at Erdenet, which A said was a mining town with a strong economy, above-average income, and close ties to Russia. Later on, we stopped a little ways off the side of the road to have lunch, which A had prepared earlier in the morning. It was Chinese-style fried rice and was quite delicious. Having read about the lacklustre cuisine in Mongolia before this trip, the meals that A had made so far have greatly exceeded expectations. They’ve had a good bit of variety (unfortunately I don’t remember exactly what we had for breakfast or dinner yesterday, but those were delicious too).

We drove to an ancient city ruin, Bibulag Ruin, located near the town of Khutag-Undur, and walked around the ruin for a bit. Not super interesting to be honest, because there wasn’t really that much to see. Only a few sections of the stone wall remained.

Afterwards, we went to set up camp for the night beside a nearby river. Accommodations was a tent which I shared with T. Though neither of us were particularly adept at setting up a tent, we got it standing (for the moment) with some help from R and M.

The weather at our campsite was a real rollercoaster. Initially the sky was clear, but as the afternoon progressed, the clouds continued to build, and soon we heard thunder cracking down in the distance. We could see that it was pouring just a couple kilometres away, but soon we again spotted the sun shining through and thought we were safe. However, raindrops began coming down on our camp shortly after, though fortunately enough it never progressed beyond a light drizzle and eventually passed, yielding a beautiful double rainbow.

All while this was happening, we got acquainted with a shaman couple. T had been very curious about Mongolian shamanism and had asked yesterday if we could meet one, and by sheer luck this couple happened to be camping just a couple hundred metres downstream of us. As we were making camp, we heard the sound of a drum from their camp. B, who was familiar with shamans (his aunt is apparently also a shaman), deduced that they were shamans and went over to confirm this. They came over to say hi and joined us for dinner, which was spaghetti with pork belly.

B, it turns out, has actually lived quite an interesting life. He’s previously lived in Japan, to study Japanese (he says he’s forgotten it all now), and Australia, to work in construction, and speaks English quite decently (according to A, many drivers don’t at all). After spending the past eight years in Australia, he’s now back in Mongolia working as a driver, having returned late last year to take care of his ageing parents.

After dinner, we went over to the shaman couple’s camp to attend a shamanic ritual. It began some time before sunset, and the man donned a very elaborate all-black costume adorned with feathers and bells. He had a headdress which covered his own face with hanging black strings, and a face with three eyes was embroidered above. The woman served as a translator of sorts, because during the ritual the shaman—who would be possessed by one of his ancestor’s spirits—would speak in ancient Mongolian, which is difficult for contemporary Mongolians to understand. We weren’t allowed to take any photos or videos of the costume or ritual.

The ritual began with the shaman summoning/invoking his ancestor’s spirit, which involved lighting a fire, repeatedly banging on a triangular drum while chanting and gyrating, and throwing milk in all four cardinal directions.

Once the shaman had completed the summoning, we went forward in turn to “consult” with the now-possessed shaman. B went first and, for some reason, received five lashes on his back from the shaman. Next was A, and while she didn’t get any lashes, she broke down in tears halfway through while they were speaking.

The remaining four of us then went forward and the shaman addressed all of us, first as a group and then in turn. I went third.

One more thing I should add here: It was rather hot in the afternoon so I’d changed into a singlet and shorts, but at this point it was 10 p.m. and the sun had gone down. With the winds gusting pretty strongly, I was very cold and for a good part of my consultation with the shaman, I was shivering heavily.

To be honest I was so distracted by the cold that I don’t remember what we spoke about very well. He asked me if I had any wishes or dreams and I said I didn’t know what they were yet, and he said I would know it “soon”, by or when I left Mongolia (I’ve already left Mongolia and I still don’t know it). He said that I’d have fortune and success in the future, but also that I should be careful not to “play with girls”. That last bit was probably lost in translation, but either way it was hilarious (B and A seemed to spend some time debating how to best convey the meaning).

Oh, and like B, I also got lashed. I was given a choice of how many to receive and thought about doing ten, but went for three at the urging of B and A. The apparatus the shaman lashed me with consisted of a bunch of fairly thick threads/strings, and while he put a good bit of force into it, it actually didn’t hurt—the force is spread out pretty evenly through your body, so I don’t think there was even a mark on my skin. From what I gather the purpose of this lashing is probably to drive away bad spirits or energies, or something like that. Or maybe this spirit is just kinky.

While I don’t have any belief in shamanism in the slightest, this was a really cool experience, both in terms of experiencing the local culture and in having the chance to observe an experienced and skillful cold-reader at work. The rest of the group seemed to take what the shaman said to heart quite seriously, with T in particular committing to a decision to move elsewhere based on what the shaman said. Afterwards we tried to give some money to the shaman for his time but he refused to take any (he only accepted a bottle of vodka we happened to have prior to the ritual, because it was one of the materials required for the ritual—along with cigarettes and horse milk), saying that this was simply his spiritual role to guide others. In Mongolia, shamans are identified and trained when they are children and are charged with providing guidance to their community. It’s not a career or a means to make a living (at least, not for the genuine ones); he actually has a day job back in Erdenet as a politician.

We wrapped up the ceremony/ritual and I went back to our camp to put on more layers because I was absolutely freezing at that point. We continued talking and drinking with them (now with the un-possessed shaman, who supposedly had no recollection of the past two to three hours) around a campfire. It was a really awesome vibe because you could also see the clear, starry night sky above us. The Mongolians sang a few of their traditional folk songs, and by the time we returned to our tent it was already past 12:30 a.m.

Sometime during the windy evening our tent had collapsed, and T and I had to rebuild it in the dark with help from the others. Soon after we went to bed. The sleeping mat I was using was very hard, so it was like sleeping on hard ground and wasn’t very comfortable (fortunately, only three out of fourteen of the nights are planned to be in a tent on this trip). All in all I only caught some four hours of sleep throughout the night and woke up just before 7 a.m. Hopefully the next night of camping will be a bit more comfortable because we actually had an air mattress that we’d agreed to take turns using, and T had had her turn first tonight.

Day 3

I’m going to be saying this a lot, but it was a beautiful morning. Really, the thing about Mongolia is that basically anywhere you go outside of the city is beautiful. Endless landscapes of rolling steppes, meandering rivers, and vast herds of livestock. If you want to go stargazing (which I always do when travelling because you get to see fuck all in Singapore), you don’t need to go anywhere in particular, you can just go anywhere (that’s not Ulaanbaatar).

To disrupt your image of this beautiful morning, here’s something else I’ll report: I succeeded in taking a shit in the wilds this very morning. I’d actually tried to have a poop on the evening of day 1 (where there was at least some level of privacy in an outhouse), but didn’t have much success then.

Early in the morning R told me that he’d done his business somewhere, which was quite surprising since he’d said the previous day that he couldn’t do it outdoors, and intended to hold it or make use of toilets at rest stops. Apparently he’d found a really good spot where you could basically sit on a tree and do your thing easily.

A while later I set out to find a spot as well, now having a backlog of several days. I happened to stumble upon what looked like the place he’d used earlier, and wow, it’s really amazing. The tree branches/roots form an almost perfect natural toilet bowl, and there’s even a sturdy stick situated in front of it that fit my toilet paper roll perfectly. Out in the wilds, you really come to appreciate these small things.

With a full stomach and empty bowels (at least for two of us), we continued west towards Lake Khuvsgul after breakfast. A suggested that since we’d be at the lake for the next three days, without any facilities, we could take a shower at the public bath in the town of Moron (no, seriously—though it’s pronounced and sometimes spelt Murun) which we were passing by, an opportunity that all of us jumped for. Though the water pressure was somewhat disappointing, I was very glad to get to scrub off three days’ of grime and change my underwear.

We also spent some time at the local mart to resupply. Among the things we bought were—purely out of respect for the local culture, of course—at least three bottles of vodka, and something like eight large bottles (two litres each) of beer. The crazy thing is that each of these two-litre beers cost only S$4. We also got some milk, because the shaman had told our group the previous night that we should, for the next three days, offer milk to the spirits at least once a day by tossing it from our hearts towards the sky.

Continuing on towards the lake, we initially planned to have a very late lunch at the lake (by the time we left Moron, it was past 2 p.m.), but changed our minds soon enough, and went a little off the road for lunch. We enjoyed the scenery and livestock grazing around us while A prepared the food.

While we were eating, a herd of goats being herded by a single woman on foot passed by us. She was frantically running around to corral the at least 100+ strong herd. Almost inevitably, some of the goats smelled our food and approached us with what was honestly quite an alarming speed. Fortunately we (mostly R who was got very enthusiastic about clapping at the goats to scare them away) drove them off without losing any of our lunch.

We completed our drive all the way to the lake in the evening, stopping by briefly at a local market situated on the lake’s southern tip before heading further up along the western shore of the lake. The night’s accommodations were to be at a ger guesthouse, but apparently we didn’t make any advance reservations and had trouble finding a place because most of them were full. It’s actually the peak of the peak tourist season in Mongolia right now, because the entire nation has ten days off for the Naadam festival.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. After trying a few different ger guesthouses without much luck, A brought us to a more upscale place, where we’d stay for one night before moving to another (cheaper) place for two nights.

And by upscale, I mean this place has a power outlet, western toilets, and even a shower (though you do need to pay to use the shower). And the beds. The beds were so soft (I mean probably not that soft in retrospect, but this was after two nights of a sore back), with sheets that were changed every day, and proper blankets and pillows.

Doing things on short notice or on an ad-hoc basis seems to be the custom in Mongolia, especially away from the city, which in some ways is a boon for the more intrepid traveller. As you’ll see, throughout the rest of the tour, there were many instances where we got to book or do things with very little notice, and our driver/guide was very open to letting us change plans on the fly.

Lake Khuvsgul is supposedly the coldest spot on our tour, with temperatures dropping to as low as 5 degrees even now during the summer. By the time we unpacked it was late and pretty cold and windy, so I busted out the down jacket and added on a couple more layers, though I still felt quite cold at times.

We had dinner outdoors, which was pasta with meat and some canned fish. We drank a little with another Golden Gobi driver who happened to pass by (B introduced him with just a single sentence, “He is gay,” and we don’t know much else about him other than that he’s actually not gay, and that he’s driving a group from Australia who had apparently made a habit of jumping out of their vehicle while it was moving), and afterwards moved into the ger where we drank for a bit more and lit the fire in the ger (gers have a firewood-powered central stove used for both cooking and heating). It got really cozy with the fire burning.

With the nicer beds here, I didn’t bother to unpack the sleeping bag this time and hopped straight in. I thought I slept pretty well, but my sleep score was only 44 (still higher than the previous nights).

Day 4

We began day 4 with some big news that was delivered to us over breakfast. A would be leaving us to return to Ulaanbaatar, and B would be taking over as the driver-guide for the rest of the tour. I don’t want speculate on the details here, so let’s just say that A had a personal/family emergency and leave it at that. She’s going to hitchhike back to one of the larger towns, probably Moron, and planned to take a bus back to Ulaanbaatar from there.

Well, only four days in and this is a real wrench in the works. It happens though. A was a great cook and a much-needed voice of reason to handle B (and the rest of us)’s insanity. So for the rest of the trip, it’ll just be the five of us (or at least for the next five days—R and M are only doing a truncated version of the itinerary and are leaving the tour on day 9, after which it’ll be just B, T, and myself).

Besides losing one member of our party, we also lost our upscale ger and moved into a more… modest place. Beds are hard, and the toilet is quite horrible, even by outhouse standards. You can see all of the ✨stuff✨ down there quite clearly (it’s quite full), and the door can’t be latched.

We took a few walks around the lake, taking in the scenery. For lunch, B’s first decision as our newly-promoted Head Cook was to bring us to a local restaurant. I don’t remember exactly what we ate because we spent more of the time there doing this “ankle bone divination”. The food took quite a while to be prepared, and the restaurant had one of these sets with four sheep ankle bones and a reference table inside. You’d roll the ankle bones, see which sides they landed on, and use the table to look up your fortune. I can’t recall the details now but the fortune I got was mixed (“difficulties in the future but with good business,” or something like that).

Later on in the afternoon we did horse riding. As a first-timer, it was a bit scary at first, and I felt like I had to constantly adjust to make sure I wasn’t falling off. But once I got used to it, it was pretty enjoyable. I had a pretty lazy horse who was very reluctant to speed up, even after repeated urging (this is probably ideal for a beginner rider, actually), but nevertheless liked it enough that I decided I’d sign up for more horse riding later in the trip if I could.

The rest of the day was fairly lazy. R, M, and T took a dip in the (very cold, I might add—my tropical ass wouldn’t have survived it) lake, while B and I elected to kick back and have a few beers by the shore. For dinner, B flexed his cooking skills and made us a Mongolian-style lamb leg soup with noodles. Amazing stuff for meat lovers like myself, but if you’re vegetarian Mongolia is going to be a tough place. B also carved out the ankle bone from the lamb leg for T, who had been quite obsessed with collecting an ankle bone set since we saw it at the restaurant.

Again it got quite cold, again I layered up liberally, and again we drank and talked for a while more before going to bed I think some time past midnight. This time round I had a lot of trouble sleeping and only got some four hours of sleep.

Day 5

I decided to put my sleeplessness to better use and headed out to the shore early in the morning, while the others were still asleep, to relax and enjoy the sun, wind, waves, and mountains while reading a book. We had a very late breakfast at almost 11 a.m. of Korean instant ramen with egg and some vegetables. I have no complaints about the taste of B’s food at all, but there’s been a noticeable decrease in the healthiness of our meals since A left us (I don’t think this is any worse than my usual diet back home, though).

Afterwards, I again followed in the footsteps of R to find a good shitting spot. I normally don’t mind an outhouse, but given the dismal condition of the one here, I took a trek of about 10 minutes to another guesthouse with fancier toilets—where R had went to earlier in the day and given me directions to—to do my business. Worth it.

We went for a boat trip shortly after at around 1.p.m., which brought us to somewhere on the lake’s opposite shore. The boat ride was nice with the cool wind and super clear water all around us, but the destination was very touristy, with a rock/cliff that had some monuments on top. Very crowded and not very interesting, so we were glad to go back when the boat returned to pick us up.

We returned and had french toast paired with jam, nutella, apples, and pomegranates for lunch at almost 3 p.m., this time with T as the chef. The rest of the day was very relaxed, with the others doing some swimming and myself and B again chilling at the shore. I also managed to get a quick workout in (usually I do this thrice a week, but at this point my last one was more than a week ago), improvising with some water bottles since there weren’t any weights around.

Dinner was mashed potato with lamb and vegetables (also delicious), and we closed off the evening by watching the local family milk the yaks (did I mention that there were always yaks grazing around our ger?). Those of you who are at this point understandably concerned about the condition of our livers will be relieved to hear that we didn’t do much, if any, drinking tonight.

By the way, R and M were huge, huge fans of yaks. They’d tried yak meat somewhere else in central Asia and it was apparently the best thing they’d ever tasted. R even bought a bottle of yak vodka (Mongolian “vodka”, while often translated as “vodka”, is quite different from typical vodka, with an A.B.V. of around 10%) earlier on at the local market, though I did not like the taste (yak and horse milk are quite an acquired taste by themselves, and I personally don’t think it goes well with alcohol).

Maybe it’s the drinking, or lack thereof, but I slept really well this night, clocking a good eight and a half hours. Or perhaps my body is getting used to these sleeping conditions (still woke up with a sore back and shoulders though).

Day 6

The group got up at around 8 a.m., had breakfast, and packed up. Today T made tomato scrambled eggs (very Chinese style and almost exactly like your typical 番茄操蛋—her parents run a Chinese restaurant in Belgium). I should mention also that all of the rest of my group, including R and M, were competent at cooking, and usually helped out with the preparation of the meals. My main, very important contribution was in ensuring the food was finished.

We left Lake Khuvsgul at around 10 a.m. On the way out, we dropped by a Tsaatan people “village”, which was really just a tourist exhibit. It’s possible to visit the actual Tsaatan people, who are semi-nomadic reindeer herders that live in ortz (tepees) instead of ger, in their native region north of Lake Khuvsgul, but that area is only accessible via a three-day horseback journey, so we had to make do with this “village”. There, T, R, and M were able to secure one of those ankle bone divination sets that we’d been so obsessed with over the past days from a stall.

We passed by Moron on the way to our next destination (a town called Shine-Ider), so we planned to again have a shower there. Unfortunately there was a really long queue this time around and we ended up skipping the shower. We did get to do some shopping and have lunch, which was Buuz, basically a dumpling with meat inside, while in town.

Up till now, we’d been driving mostly on tarmac with some bouts of offroading, but from Moron onwards until Khorgo Volcano (where we’d arrive at near the end of day 7), there was approximately zero tarmac (okay, there’d be a 100 km stretch of tarmac towards the end, but that’s less dramatic). Ahead of us lay probably more than 400 km of offroading in total.

It was supposed to be quite a mundane day of driving today, but somewhere along the way, we heard that there was a local Naadam festival going on in the area, and spontaneously decided to drop by. Some background: Mongolia celebrates the Naadam (which literally means “games”) festival nationwide from 11 to 13 July every year (I’d thought about coming earlier to see the games in Ulaanbaatar, but decided against it because the nationwide festival gets very crowded), but local regions each have their own dates for Naadam. This time round, the town of Tumurbulag was celebrating Naadam as part of its centennial anniversary.

We had a little bit of difficulty getting information about the exact location and nature of the event, but found our way to the festival by about 4 p.m. We initially drove the “wrong way” towards the town itself, and were stopped by a police officer who told us that the horse race was going on and about to come in our direction, and that the finishing line/festival site was in fact right behind us. We turned tail and raced towards the finishing line, and fortunately made it there before the horses did, just in time to watch the end of the race. Great timing!

The attendance at the festival was rather astonishing, considering that it was in the middle of absolutely bumfuck nowhere, and several hours’ offroading from the nearest paved road. Probably thousands of people in total, with almost a hundred gers/tents set up in the area.

I think Mongolians are used to offroading though. You wouldn’t believe the sheer number of people we see driving past us offroad in a freaking Toyota Prius (our own ride is a Hyundai Starex 4x4, a pretty decent mix of comfort and offroad capabilities).

The festival was a proper festival, not just a sporting spectacle. There were a bunch of stalls with festival games, food, and drink. After settling down from the excitement of the horse race, we wandered around the festival a bit, stopping to watch some of the ongoing wrestling.

Besides horse racing and wrestling, Naadam also includes a third traditional sport of archery. However, it’s a very quick event and we didn’t get any chances to witness it during our trip (spoiler alert: this wasn’t the only festival we went to).

Although we planned to stay the night around Tumurbulag at first, we could only get to our destination the next day (which was now a significantly longer journey due to this detour) by doubling back through Shine-Ider, so once we were done enjoying the festival, we turned around and headed that way instead.

After making a good bit of progress towards Shine-Ider, we set camp in a wide grass plain surrounded by mountains as far as the eye could see, with a small river flowing beside us. Really beautiful place. This time round, T and I had a bit more success erecting our tent (we actually swapped tents with R and M, and this one had a simpler construction).

Having missed out on the chance to take a shower earlier, R, M, and T decided to wash themselves a little in the river. I seriously considered joining in, but the river was very cold and quite shallow anyway, so I settled for just splashing my face a little.

Dinner tonight was to be Khorkhog, a traditional Mongolian barbeque which is cooked with hot stones. It’s delicious but the drawback is that it takes about two hours to prepare, so with the long day of driving behind us, we only got to eating some time past 9 p.m.

The evening started out pretty warm and I could sit outside comfortably in a shirt and shorts. Watching the sun descend above the mountains and river while waiting for dinner was awesome. Some time shortly after we set camp, two of the local folk dropped by and asked us if we’d like to purchase a marmot that they’d just hunted (the price was 100,000 Tugriks, about S$36), and we agreed (because why not). They left to cook the marmot for us.

The temperature dropped pretty quickly as soon as the sun set behind the mountains, and in no time I found myself with five layers on. We started a fire with some nearby pieces of abandoned wood, but they were quite wet so the fire was smoky and not very strong. B asked us to look for dried cow shit (the rest of us were a little reluctant to use our hands, so most of the collection was done by B) as supplementary fuel. But even though cow shit burns for a good while, it produces a fairly weak fire, so the fire did not really warm us up much.

Dinner, perhaps partly due to the forced wait, was amazing. Besides the barbequeued lamb, we had an assortment of potatoes, carrots, and salad—and we also got to feast our eyes on the countless stars above us. Despite the cold, the bugs, and the general discomfort of sleeping in a tent, this atmosphere right here, out in the vast open with everything and nothing around you, is irreplaceable.

Some time around midnight, the marmot men returned, this time having grown their numbers to five strong, with the delivery in hand. Despite being absolutely stuffed from the barbeque at this point, we managed to drink and eat a bit of the marmot together with them. The marmot had been cooked in a manner quite similar to the Khorkhog barbeque we’d just had (with hot stones placed within the marmot, which was also why they took five hours to come back to us), and the men cut the animal out into strips of fat and meat for us. This thing had an incredible amount of fat, maybe 80–90% of its body. We also got to try some of the “soup” that’d developed from the cooking process, and it was insanely strong (with one part soup and ten parts water, it might actually be quite good). We ended up saving most of the marmot for tomorrow (B said that it was actually better cold).

All of the five local men were related in some way (brothers and cousins), and while one of them who spoke some English had a job as a bartender in Ulaanbaatar (he was back while on holiday to visit his family), the other four essentially made their living by hunting local game.

Day 7

With quite a lot of ground to cover today, the group woke up at 8 a.m. and quickly packed up. B prepared a quick breakfast of sliced sausage and cucumber, but with our stomachs still full from last night’s revelry, the rest elected to skip and I ended up forcing down most of the breakfast.

After some hours of driving, we arrived at Shine-Ider, a decently-sized town where we had a (very much-needed) shower and lunch at a local restaurant. This was not even the halfway point of our trip today, so we didn’t linger long.

Today really was quite unremarkable. We continued on from Shine-Ider to Jargalant, then back to a paved road (with all the bumping and shaking, we’d begun to forget how quiet cars actually can be on a proper road), where we drove to Terkhiin Tsaagan Lake (this area is probably better known by the nearby Khorgo Volcano) and did a wee bit more offroading to get to our ger accommodations for the night. By this time, it was past 7 p.m. and we probably clocked more than 8 hours of driving.

Mad kudos to B for getting us there in one piece. Drivers in Mongolia don’t exactly enjoy strong labour laws, and B told us about how he’d only gotten four hours of sleep in the car returning from his previous tour before starting ours. And after our current tour ends, he would need to pick up his next tour group at 5:30 a.m. the next day (so about 12 hours of rest in total, if we wrap up in the afternoon). It’s a tough job even without needing to handle the whims and demands of your group as a driver-guide (he said that he was never doing another driver-guide stint again after our group) (probably because he loves us so much that he could never imagine doing it with anyone else).

Speaking of labour laws, the accommodations for tonight (and tomorrow night) are AMAZING. We were met by the family running the guesthouse and three children helped us carry our things to the ger—you just know service is going to be fantastic when a place uses child labour. The beds were super soft, the lights were bright (a bit too bright actually, we put one of the foldable chair cases over it to dim it a bit), and there was power.

And get this, after roughing it out in a tent and a pretty shoddy ger guesthouse for the past three days, this place has proper western-style toilets. And they’re incredibly clean and brand-new. And there are SHOWERS.

The view is really nice too; we’re situated right in front of the lake. The family also offered to help us cook dinner so that B gets a break after the very long day.

We didn’t do much and went to bed soon after dinner. I had a good, long sleep. Nine and a half hours.

Day 8

We woke up around half past eight and soon after got around to making breakfast and lunch, which were respectively bread with pickles and tuna, and fried rice. Our intention was to hike the nearby Khorgo Volcano today. Originally, we’d planned to walk to the volcano from our ger (probably about 6 km one-way), climb up, have lunch somewhere on top, then descend and walk back. But the sky was worryingly overcast, and the forecast stated that there’d be thunderstorms from 2 p.m. onwards. We contemplated going really early the next morning to catch the sunrise instead, but ended up choosing to brave the risk of rain today (and take the van to and from the volcano instead of going on foot).

We finished breakfast and had one of the local children/teenagers (she was a 15 year-old student taking up a job here for the summer, so this is probably legal) help us to do the dishes for 10,000 Tugriks. By the time we started the hike, it was a little past noon. The volcano is dormant, with no smell of sulphur whatsover, and pretty short at just 145 m from the base to the summit. The ground was very rocky and uneven though, so it wasn’t a totally straightforward climb.

We made it to the rim in just 20 minutes, then continued clockwise around the rim, which took another 45 minutes. While we were traversing the rim, some light rain began coming down, and I put on my raincoat. The rain continued throughout the rest of the hike, intensifying near the end, but it never really got too heavy. We got back to the starting point after an hour and twenty minutes total.

We got back to the ger and had lunch. The rain continued, so we all spent the rest of the day lying around in the ger. I took a shower around 5:30 p.m. when the rain briefly subsided, which was a great choice because the showers were still empty and sparkling clean.

For dinner, the guesthouse owners made us some sort of potato dish, which we ate together with leftover fried rice from lunch, some marmot, and a bowl of noodles. (By the way, I think we never did finish all the marmot, and eventually had to throw some of it out a day or two later.)

Then, we drank. We drank wayyyyy too much, at least three bottles of vodka, and talked about so much crazy stuff I can’t even begin writing it here. This was the last night that R and M would be spending with us, and it was really bittersweet because we’d all had such a blast together. So many amazing memories, dumb inside jokes, and just general tomfoolery. It was a wild week and a wilder night.

But the tour must go on.

Day 9

We departed some time after 10 a.m. and headed straight for Tsetserleg, where R and M would be leaving us to catch a bus to Ulaanbaatar. Arriving just after 1 p.m., they went to get tickets for the bus, but apparently they were sold out—for some reason though, they were able to secure the tickets in the end after waiting a while (not too sure on the specifics, but I’m glad it all worked out in the end).

We said our final goodbyes, and then it was just the three of us. T, B, and I went to eat some Buuz for lunch, and did some shopping while we were still in Tsetserleg.

Our next destination was the Tsenkher hot springs. The drive there was rather difficult. We’d of course been doing a lot of offroading, but those (off)roads so far had been mostly dry; the ones here were especially muddy and undulating, and we got almost-stuck a few times (we’d be totally screwed in a 2WD).

But in return we crossed several fields with thousands upon thousands of yak, horses, cows, and goats. We’d seen plenty of cattle up till now, but these fields were particularly dense, and we stopped a couple times for photos.

The hot spring that we were staying at was fairly upscale, I think primarily because all of the ones here are (if you haven’t noticed by now, our tour is on the more budget-friendly side). If you’re going to attract guests to relax at a hot spring, it doesn’t make sense to skimp out on the rest of the facilities. Nice toilets, soft beds, and of course a shower with the hot springs. This time round, we got a mini-ger with just two beds, but B was able to squeeze in with us by sleeping on the floor space in between. Normally, drivers and guides are expected to just sleep in the car if there’re no extra beds, and B had actually spent the second night when we were camping sleeping on the ground outside so that A could have the car to herself (I’m still not sure if he was just being nice/polite or simply straight up crazy and genuinely enjoying the outdoors).

T and I went for a soak right after arriving, and as an avid onsen-enjoyer, it was a little underwhelming. Mostly because it was a little crowded with some children running around, and none of the pools had a temperature I felt was good (one was way too hot and the rest were too cold). There was also a sulphuric smell that always hung in the air.

It started raining on and off in the afternoon, and we (well, T and B) made dinner at a sheltered area nearby our ger (they didn’t let us cook inside the ger), which was noodle soup.

With four hours of offroading ahead of us to the next location, Orkhon Valley, we decided to turn in early for the night today and wake up at 6 a.m. the next day. I thought about going for a soak again either in the late night or early evening, but decided against it out of sheer laziness (the ones in Japan are nicer anyway, and don’t make you keep your clothes on).

Day 10

The morning was cold. Just under ten degrees probably, and cold enough that my breath was misting. But I slept pretty well, almost a round eight hours. We packed up fairly quickly and left a little past seven.

With the rain that’d been coming down unrelentingly the previous night, the path to Orkhon Valley was difficult. In total the drive took six hours, over mainly muddy roads. At one point while traversing a waterlogged ditch, the right rear bumper of the van was dislodged, and B had to tape it back up. On the way, we had a brief stop for breakfast which was boiled eggs and leftover noodle soup from yesterday.

We made it to Orkhon Valley just past 1 p.m., and stopped by the local store to get some eggs (or at least, B said he was going to get eggs and inexplicably returned with three cans of beer in hand) (we did get the eggs in the end), then at the local family that we’d be staying with for the next two nights. After quickly saying hi to the family, we headed on to a Yak Festival going on just a kilometre or two away.

We’d actually known about and been hyping up this Yak Festival for quite a while now since the first few days of the tour, especially in front of R and M (as you may recall, they love yaks), since they wouldn’t be able to join us here. But it turned out to be quite a disappointment (but if anyone here meets R and M, make sure to tell them we had the time of our lives). There were barely any yaks to be seen, and it was really just a smaller-scale version of the Naadam festival that we’d seen a few days ago.

There was a (not very exciting) yak race (I reckon they’re better for eating than for riding), followed by some wrestling (not with yaks, just with people like in Naadam), and then some riders paraded some yaks around for a bit. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad festival necessarily, but I came for the yaks and there just weren’t many yaks, bafflingly enough. Apparently, there would actually be a Naadam festival the next day as well, so this “Yak Festival” might’ve just been a pre-event for Naadam.

We headed back to the nomadic family’s ger camp to unpack. The camp is in quite a nice location, perched on a hill in front of the Orkhon River, which is the longest river in Mongolia. Facilities-wise, the toilet is an outhouse but actually quite clean, and they even have a cubicle with a bucket/pot toilet that has a toilet seat (a bonus for me, because I don’t like squatting). No power, but not a huge issue for me because I had two fully-charged powerbanks at this point. Before the trip, I’d actually been considering purchasing a portable solar panel to bring with me, but I think my powerbank reserves never even dropped below 70% throughout the trip, so it would’ve definitely been excessive.

Since several days back, T had been expressing an interest in obtaining a deel, a piece of Mongolian traditional clothing. B happened to know a “dress woman” (his words) (I actually didn’t even know it was called a deel until I looked it up while writing this post, we just kept calling it a dress/coat) who’d be able to craft a deel for her, and who happened to live nearby in the area. After unwinding for a bit at the camp, we set off for dress woman’s place, which turned out to only be a couple kilometres away.

T took quite a while to pick out her dress/coat, trying on several different ones before eventually settling on a grey piece with a golden belt. She’d wanted a plain one with a more masculine style, and this fit the bill exactly. The deel is reminiscent of other traditional Asian gowns, making use of frog fasteners that are seen on qipaos, and the style of the belt resembles obi that are commonly used on Japanese clothing (disclaimer: this is based entirely on my extremely amateur judgement, so might be totally wrong).

Soon after T was done closing the deal on her deel, one of the families living in a nearby ger came by with a motorcycle. Since I’d mentioned to B early on in the tour that I liked riding motorcycles and wanted to do it in Mongolia, he’d said that he could get me one in Orkhon Valley, and this was apparently it. B had a go on the cycle and so did I. Due to various circumstances, it’d been almost a month since I last rode in Singapore, so it was a little fun to get back on a motorcycle and let loose (zero equipment whatsover, offroad, and a few beers in), though it was just for a very short while and a quick round around the gers. Afterwards T (who had approximately zero experience riding a motorcycle) wanted to give it a shot (she said, “I’ve seen the local children do it, it can’t be that hard,”), so we gave her some basic instruction (she did at least have a manual car license) and let her go straight for some ten or fifteen metres. B, despite appearing to be very carefree about letting her ride in the past days, was very worried about her getting hurt, and held on tight to the motorcycle the whole time.

Then we rode on a UAZ, a.k.a. “Russian van”, to another family’s encampment to buy a sheep and bring it back. There was no particular reason why, one of the men in the family who’s a carpenter/mechanic and owns the van invited us to go and we said hell, why not.

Most tours in Mongolia actually use the Russian van (we’d passed by quite a few other Golden Gobi groups by this point) due to its low cost and pretty good offroad capabilities—quite a bit better than our Korean van, in fact. The interior of the van is not very comfortable, though. Unlike our van, the seats are hard and don’t recline at all. Also, no air conditioning.

We waited inside the other family’s ger while carpenter man (sorry, I never did learn his nor dress woman’s name) went with another guy to fetch the sheep. This family had a one-month old baby. Apparently, they’d delivered it at a hospital in a nearby city—I guess it makes sense that even nomads make use of modern medical care when they can.

We returned to carpenter man/dress woman’s ger, where the sheep was killed (having still pretty strong memories of the last time I saw something like this ten years ago in Brunei, I decided against watching the butchering and preparation). Earlier on, B had arranged for the family to cook some Mongolian pasta with yak meat for us, so that we could have a taste of the meat that R and M had been drumming up the whole trip, and we had that for dinner. It was… ordinarily delicious. Not bad but not mind-blowing either. Really it just tasted like normal Mongolian pasta with normal beef or lamb meat.

Overall though, this afternoon was a really cool experience. It was a true immersion into a nomadic family’s lifestyle, and I had the chance to observe a few of the peculiar local customs. For example, the Mongolians (men?) each kept a snuff bottle called a Khuurug, which they would show and exchange with each other to sniff or even snort. I’m not clear on the exact conditions that trigger this exchange (earlier at the yak festival, we’d actually met an old man who’d let/made us sniff his bottle), or on the exact contents of the bottle (I’d gave it a sniff and had no idea—all I can tell you is that the scent really lingers at the back of your head). Another custom was that, apparently, female guests (non-family members) are not supposed to sit in the ger at the position directly opposite the door. I guess there’s probably more nuance to this, though, because we’d all been taking beds in the same position when using a ger throughout the whole trip, and T’s position was always at the bed directly opposite the door.

By the time we departed, it was already dark and quite cold. The excitement of the day was not over yet, though. Earlier on we’d had some laundry done for us, and it was finished when we arrived back at our accommodations, but wet, so we set out to hang it up around the ger. But there was no light in the ger (there was a lightbulb, but it required a battery to be plugged in first, which had not been done), and someone had already lit the central stove to heat up the room. One thing led to another and T ended up burning her leg on the exposed hot stove. Bad way to end the day but fortunately she seems fine now (B applied some sort of traditional remedy involving sugar to the burn, despite some light protesting from T).

Day 11

The bed was a little hard, though not the worst I’ve had so far, and it got a little cold during the night, so I didn’t sleep too well. I woke up quite early around seven (actually, for some reason I usually woke up quite consistently around seven during this trip) and spent some time enjoying the sights and the sounds in front of the river. The biggest thing I’ll miss from this trip, perhaps, is just being able to sit down somewhere and do basically nothing. It’s somehow easy to do that with the wind blowing, the river flowing, and animals lolling about beside you.

I’m not sure how I didn’t mention this till now, but B’s a very loud snorer. T and I fortunately both have earplugs which have seen consistent daily use (even with earplugs in, I could often still hear B, though at a more bearable volume). Throughout the night I heard some concerningly odd snoring sounds, but I think those were just yak grunts. The yak here don’t seem to have any qualms getting real close to the gers to get a taste of the sweet sweet grass.

T and B only got up past nine, and by the time we finished breakfast (sunny-side up eggs and bread with tuna/onions spread) and left for the day’s activities, it was almost noon.

I should mention at this point that we had decided, since several days ago actually, to make some tweaks to our itinerary. Originally, we were meant to depart Orkhon Valley on day 12 tomorrow, and head east to Kharkhorin. On day 13, we’d go to Khogno Khan national park, followed by Khustai Nuruu national park on day 14, before finally returning to Ulaanbaatar on day 15. But B had suggested that we skip Khustai Nuruu national park because, in his words, “you can’t see fuckin’ nothing,” (the director of Golden Gobi apparently shared a similar sentiment, because she was willing to cover the cost of another night’s ger stay that we’d need from skipping Khustai Nuruu) and T and I were happy to replace that day with another day in Orkhon Valley. So we’d be doing another full day here in Orkhon Valley tomorrow, before going to Kharkhorin on day 13, and hitting up Khogno Khan on day 14.

We first dropped by dress woman’s place for B to talk with them a little, and I think transfer payment for T’s dress/coat. With us now staying an extra night in Orkhon Valley, we’d originally planned to just stay at our current place for another night, but dress woman/carpenter man suggested that we could stay at their ger instead.

Initially I had some reservations about this, because I loved the location of the other ger. B and T were rather enthusiastic because dress woman/carpenter man had been very friendly with us, a lot more so than the family we were currently staying with, but I’m really more the sort that prefers to be left alone (it’s not that I disliked our interactions, I just don’t want to feel too obliged to talk to them if I were to stay here). I eventually came around and agreed to the move, primarily because this place had its own unique scenery and it begun to grow on me (you can see where my priorities are at). So tomorrow, we’ll be moving over here.

Afterwards we headed to Orkhon Valley’s main attraction, the waterfall. From the carpark it’s quite a bit of a walk to the waterfall, maybe a kilometre. Perhaps because of that, the waterfall itself wasn’t too crowded despite being a rather touristy place (they even have a zipline going down across the waterfall).

We hiked down to the base of the waterfall, which required some nimble handwork and footwork at some points, and enjoyed the mist at the base for a bit. No swimming was allowed, not that any sensible person would’ve tried it considering how much flow the waterfall had. We explored the surrounding area for a bit and T spent some time picking flowers from around the area (she gathered a surprisingly large variety within a surprisingly small region), while I just enjoyed the river and the valley.

When departing the waterfall, T and I decided to walk back to our encampment, which was about four kilometres as the crow flies. In theory it was fairly straightforward since the camp was situated right next to the river, which fed into the waterfall: we just needed to follow the river, and so we bid farewell to B, who’d meet us back at the camp.

We did just that at first, but soon realised that we were actually following the wrong river—there are actually two rivers coming from different directions that join together at the waterfall, and to go the right direction we’d need to cross the river we were currently following. Unfortunately we couldn’t find a safe place to cross even after some backtracking. I called B to come back to the waterfall to get us, but T was insistent on continuing the walk, saying that we’d be able to find a crossing eventually, since there was a path by which we got here on the van. This was true, but it was a very roundabout route that required at least twice the distance we’d originally intended, and it meant we would no longer have the river as a single reference landmark that we could follow all the way, so navigation would be more challenging.

T and I were unable to come to a consensus and parted ways, and I met B back at the carpark. I was quite worried that T might get lost, because she had neither a map nor a means to contact us in case things went wrong. B brought us to dress woman’s ger, where I borrowed a motorcycle to go look for T with one of the local men that knew the area. Thankfully, we spotted her after some fifteen minutes of looking. T seemed to be on the right path and said she knew the rest of the way back (our encampment was actually visible from the road at the point we met her), so we left her to complete the walk and went back.

(For the record, T admitted much later on that she did actually get lost a few times during the walk, both before and after she met us, but either way she found her way back in the end.)

With my concerns assuaged, B said I could borrow the motorcycle for a while longer and just go out riding for a bit by myself, and I very gladly accepted.

It was magnificent. Riding offroad, with no helmet or any other gear, was different than what I was used to, but I managed well enough (mostly by going at a conservative speed) on the bumpy, low-traction terrain. Bouncing along through the grassy fields past yaks and goats and horses with the mountains and rivers in the distance, and the deep blue cloudless sky above me was just an indescribable ecstasy.

I had my fill of fun and returned after about a half hour, and B let me drive the van back to our ger (it was left-hand drive which I wasn’t used to, but also where we were there weren’t exactly roads, so it didn’t matter much). There, we found that T and already arrived some time ago and was in the process of preparing some lunch. Except B had already ordered some lunch earlier from the local family, which comprised rice with potatoes, meat, and egg.

After a fairly exciting day, we spent the rest of the afternoon just chilling. B made Buuz for dinner and also taught T how to do it. Though for some reason, the “Buuz” that came out somehow bore a much stronger resemblance in its shape to a round Chinese bao than it did the more curry puff-shaped Buuz that we’d been eating so far. But if you’re of the view that it’s what on the inside that matters, then Buuz it was.

B also said that he messed up the dough/pastry used for the Buuz wrapping somehow, but I couldn’t really taste any difference (maybe it was harder to shape or something). Either way, I got to eat lots of meat and didn’t have to do anything, so I wasn’t about to complain.

Day 12

In the morning we packed our things up and moved over to dress woman’s ger (for breakfast we had eggs with some of last night’s leftover Buuz/bao). After settling in, T and I headed off for our second horse trek of the trip. Since this wasn’t technically part of the tour itinerary, we had to fork out some extra cash, but both of us had wanted to do more horse riding and B was happy to arrange it for us.

This ride was SO much better than the one we’d done at Khuvsgul Lake. The horse that I had was super responsive and it was easy to get him moving, and the saddles were also really soft. He really liked running and we spent a good amount of time at a canter or gallop. We trekked about three kilometres out and back into a valley south of the ger, with two dogs accompanying us the whole way.

My horse did misbehave a little (okay, maybe a lot) at times. He wanted to run so much that sometimes he just took off without any prompting, which I didn’t particularly mind, but then I had to pull on the reins fairly hard to get him to slow down or stop. Also, for some reason, he kept on turning towards a different direction than where we were heading (I imagine he probably has some “usual” route that he does, and was trying to follow that). At one point, he ran through a river and my lower leg got quite wet. Still a great experience though. T also had a much better time on this ride; she’d apparently had some allergic reactions on the previous one, but did not experience anything like that this time.

We had lunch right after the horse trek, which was Mongolian pasta. Afterwards T and I decided to hike up a nearby mountain/hill.

We seriously underestimated the climb. From far it looked like a pretty easy walk up, but we found ourselves already breathing quite hard only a little bit of the way in. It was rather steep, maybe a 35% incline on average, and neither of us had brought much water. To be fair to us, the air was actually pretty thin where we were, starting at some 1,850 m, so we only had 80% of the oxygen available at sea level to work with.

The ascent actually felt like it got easier as we progressed (maybe my body “remembered” how to exert itself after a while), and it took a while with the frequent breaks that we had, but we persevered and after an hour and fifteen minutes, we reached the top (2,260 m) and were rewarded with a fantastic view of the area.

There we found a nice spot to sit at and just chilled and chatted for a bit. By the time we completed the descent, which took about an hour, and got back it’d been three and a half hours since we set off. Overall a really satisfying hike, but it was great to have some water to drink again back at the ger.

Later on in the evening we spontaneously decided to get some beers (is anyone really surprised at this point?) and dropped by the local store. On the way back B let T drive for a bit, but her first sentence in the driver’s seat, “which one is the accelerator?” did not inspire much confidence (I hastily put on my seatbelt). We made it back alive though.

As we started drinking, we invited over three American travellers who were staying at the next ger over, one living in Korea and the other two in San Francisco. There were all very interesting personalities and we had a blast together (in particular one of them, of Irish descent, said he was very glad we invited them over to drink because he’d been going through, err, “withdrawls”, after three dry days on his tour). Later on some of the folks constructed a bonfire, and at some point someone brought bottles of vodka over, we kept on drinking, did some dumb stuff together, you know how it goes. Another drunken night in front of a beautiful fire, under the stars. I love these moments.

Day 13

Orkhon Valley was fantastic, with three full days of excitement and activity, but it was finally time for us to move on today. We headed to Kharkhorin, the former capital of the Mongolian empire, with the drive there taking some three to four hours (since it’d hadn’t rained much the past days, the road out was fortunately dry and we did not lose any more bumpers). On the way there we stopped at a roadside kitchen ger (for breakfast we’d had french toast) where we ate Mongolian pasta for lunch. Gastronomically speaking I think I’m quite easy to please, but this meal was actually pretty bad—the noodles were, to put it bluntly, utterly, hopelessly flavourless. I was still able to enjoy it in the end, though, with the assistance of a good helping of ketchup and onion.

Arriving at the city, we first dropped by the hospital, where T had the burn on her leg examined, cleaned, and bandaged. Somewhat surprisingly, we were able to get this done quite quickly and cheaply. There was no queue and we were out of the hospital in less than twenty minutes, and the total medical bill came to 50,000 Tugriks (~S$20). The hospital building did look like it’d seen better days, but there was a very modern-looking one under construction right next to it.

We then headed to the Kharkhorum museum, which exhibited the history of the city, spanning from the stone and bronze ages through the great Mongolian empire. Then we checked into our ger for the night. It was one of the better-equipped ones, with nice toilets, showers, soft beds, the whole thing (the reason I don’t sound that excited about it this time round is because B had been setting very high expectations for this ger guesthouse since we’d arrived in Orkhon Valley, but don’t get me wrong, I was very happy). We were able to take a shower for the first time in some three or four days.

We had spaghetti for dinner at the guesthouse’s restaurant, and later in the evening, we attended a traditional Mongolian folk music performance.

I actually really enjoyed it. The songs that they performed were largely connected to nature (desert, mountains, things like that) and carried a unique soulfulness. The instruments and costumes bore some resemblance to what you’d find in traditional Chinese music (or maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough to really tell the differences between a guzheng/erhu and what they were using). But one part that was definitely unique was the singing, especially the throat singing. I’d heard a bit about throat singing in the past, but hearing it in person, it was so much more powerful and versatile than I’d expected.

At the end a contortionist came in and did some crazy stuff, like almost literally putting her head up her own ass, and balancing her whole body on a rotating pole with just her mouth. I’d thought that it was a bit random given the rest of the performance we’d had up till that point was purely musical, but apparently this is also a traditional Mongolian performance art, so it checks out.

Day 14

We had a relatively early start to the day, getting up at 8 a.m. to have breakfast, and leaving right after to see the Erdene Zuu Monastery. Like the Amarbayasgalant Monastery that we’d seen on the very first day of the tour, Erdene Zuu used to be a massive compound hosting hundreds of monks that reached its peak size some years ago, but had many of its buildings destroyed during a communist purge.

After leaving the monastery, we had a short coffee break at a nearby shop (we’d been doing instant coffee and tea this whole time, and this tasted really good), then dropped by the hospital for T to change her bandages. On the way out of Kharkhorin, we had an extremely scrumptious kebab for lunch.

There was actually one more place that I wanted to visit but which we forgot and missed out on: the Kharkhorin Rock. It’s a giant stone penis, and is supposed to symbolise both celibacy and fertility, which kind of seems a bit like cheating to me, like come on these are literally opposite things. I didn’t enjoy penises enough to ask B to turn back, so we just skipped it.

Our next stop was Khogno Khan national park, a semi-desert nearby the town of Rashaant. It was a scorching day today, and being in/near the desert didn’t make it any better. Originally we were supposed to ride camels but both T and I were hooked on horses at this point, so B arranged for us to switch the camel ride to a horse ride. Nothing personal against camels, but at this point in the trip I was seriously thinking of coming back to Mongolia next year to do a two-week horse riding expedition, so I wanted all the practice I could get.

We arrived at our final ger of the trip, which was clean but basic. I think it’s not technically located in the semi-desert, but it sure felt like it. The inside of our ger was so warm that I resorted to sitting under one of the few trees in the area for most of the afternoon to at least get some wind. There was a massive amount of insects on the ground all around us. They hopped around like grasshoppers, but also made a lot of noise and sounded a bit like crickets. Maybe there were both, I don’t know—I was too distracted by the heat to care very much about the bugs.

Since it was hot, we only did our third horse ride later on in the afternoon when it cooled down a little. It was quite meh, probably my least favourite of the three. The saddle was hard and the stirrups weren’t the right length for me, so it was quite uncomfortable and also very tiring when we went faster. Most importantly, they didn’t let us ride freely; the whole time, we were on a lead held by two nine-year old boys who served as our guides. Cute experience, but not really what I’d had in mind. We did a loop to a nearby monastery/temple, though it was honestly not that interesting either (I mean, we’d just seen a super massive monastery a few hours ago, so it was always going to be difficult to beat that).

Oh well. With our tour coming to an end, T and I decided we should have Khorkhog barbeque to commemorate our last night together (she’d been prescribed an antibiotic regime, so at this point our default practice of heavy drinking was out of the question). The barbeque, at least, fulfilled my expectations. It was delicious and we invited two Australian travellers staying at the same ger camp (more precisely, they were actually camping in the vicinity) to join us in enjoying the lamb.

We drank a small amount but nothing ludicrous, and after some time chatting and stargazing, turned in at around 11 p.m. B and the other Mongolians went to get more alcohol (from where, I’m not sure) and kept on drinking until much later in the night.

The last night at this ger was sadly a bit of a bad experience. There were a lot of insects, which didn’t particularly bother me that much (no cockroaches), but T was quite freaked out by them and spent a good amount of time exterminating bugs (she broke the ger’s broom with her frantic but honestly ineffectual attempts at squishing the bugs). At some point she was satisfied that their numbers had been sufficiently thinned out and finally went to bed. But maybe an hour or two later, I heard T scream out (I couldn’t really get to sleep and was still awake). A bug had crawled onto her face, and she ended up going outside to sleep in the car.

Meanwhile, I still had no luck falling asleep. At around 4 a.m., I went outside the ger to take a leak and look at the stars for a bit, when suddenly I heard some growling from behind me, and one of the dogs on the property approached me and began soft-attacking me, repeatedly shoving its body into me and nibbling on my legs—I could feel its teeth, but thankfully it never put any real force into biting me, so I got away unscathed. I tried to calm it down to no avail and was eventually forced to retreat back to the ger (all of the countryside dogs that we’ve encountered on this trip seem to have been very strictly trained to never enter a ger).

So a bit of a sour night to end the tour, but no one was hurt (well, maybe if you count mental or emotional damage).

Day 15

We set off back towards Ulaanbaatar after a quick breakfast of eggs and bread. We hadn’t technically visited the semi-desert yet, so B brought us there for a quick look at the sand dunes. Pretty cool, but really hard to walk on. I’m not a big fan of sand, it’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere, so I was happy to limit my exposure to the desert to the few minutes that we spent there (I don’t think I’m likely to ever do a tour around the Gobi Desert).

Our final meal together, just like the lunch we’d had on the first day, was Khuushuur at a roadside kitchen ger. B had wanted to bring us to eat some ice cream from a nearby dairy farm run by a retired Mongolian sumo wrestler champion (or something like that, I’m not actually too clear on the details), but unfortunately the place was closed, so the Khuushuur was the conclusion to our two weeks together. It was genuinely pretty good though.

The drive to Ulaanbaatar took maybe three hours, but we spent another one or two hours stuck in traffic in the city (the jam was really bad) before we reached my hotel at around 3:30 p.m.

And that was it. I bid farewell to T and B. After fifteen days of excitement and stimulation, 2,600 km of driving, nine different gers, two nights of camping, one concert, three horse rides, two festivals, five showers, one shamanic ritual, two lakes, six nights of binge drinking, one dog attack, three days of tossing milk in the air, two monasteries, one marmot, one broken bumper, zero regrets, and one damn good unforgettable journey of a lifetime, that was it.

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Well, that was it for my time with T and B, but there was still a bit more before my trip fully ended. I’d booked myself an executive suite at a four-star hotel for the night that I’d be spending in Ulaanbaatar before flying back, so that I could enjoy the sheer luxury of a fancy-ass hotel room coming off of fifteen days of roughing it out. And enjoy I did. My room had one of those Japanese toilets with buttons and shit. Do you know how crazy it is seeing something like that after having to hear your shit plop into a pit below you, praying that these rickety wooden planks you were squatting on would hold your weight, just the day before?

I took a bath (it was a little concerning how much darker the water became once I got in) and went out to get a bottle of vodka (Xapaa, which B says is the best vodka, because “it’s cheap.”) as a souvenir. For dinner, I went to the hotel’s restaurant, an “Irish Pub” which was a little pricey but excellent. And then I had another bath, just because I could, and got around to enjoying those fat fluffy fancy sheets they’d put on my bed.

Day 16

I got up, gorged myself on the buffet breakfast, packed my things, checked out, and went to the hotel’s restaurant again for lunch (spicy shrimp pasta this time, also exquisite). B had arranged for his stepdaughter, U, to pick me up at 1 p.m. and send me to the airport. I thought it was a little amusing that he’d actually asked U to do this, because at some point a few days ago (I think we were a few drinks in) he’d kept on talking about how “fucking hot” U was, how she was “single and your age,” and how I should marry her so that I would have to call him “daddy” (and there was more stuff, but let’s not get further into the details—you have no idea how many things I’ve already had to omit or otherwise censor to make this publishable).

U was a lot less unhinged than her stepfather, which I realise doesn’t really say a lot, and actually quite nice to talk to. Having spent some years studying in the States, she spoke English rather fluently, and though I hate to admit it after everything B had said, was in fact very attractive.

My flight was scheduled for 6:30 p.m., and the 1 p.m. pick-up time had felt appropriate given the two hours we’d spent in traffic in the city the day before. But lo and behold, barely any traffic in the city today, and we were at the airport before 2 p.m. U was nice enough to have some coffee with me to kill time, before I was left to my own devices at 3 p.m.

And of course, my flight got delayed, so it wasn’t until 8 p.m. that I finally found the wonderful but demanding landscape of Mongolia shrinking away out the plane window.

And twelve hours later, here I am, back at home.

Afterword

If anyone’s actually read through the whole thing from the beginning and gotten to this point, which is now more than 15,000 words and over an hour of reading time: Firstly, wow, that’s fucking crazy, surely you have better things to do, and secondly, thank you.

I journal a lot and have been doing so for a long time, but this is the first time in more than five years that I’ve made any of it public. Writing stuff down is easy (kinda), but making it presentable and coherent takes a bit more work. It took some 20 hours of editing to get from the raw 12,000 words of journal entries that I made during the trip itself to this post here.

Some months ago, I was thinking about the first solo trip that I’d ever done, when I was a student on exchange in China in 2019. Back then, I was part of a programme which required me to make a blog post every week, so I wrote about my travels. Unfortunately, the original site that the post was hosted on no longer exists, and there’s only a text-only version left on the web archive.

I’ve done a lot of solo trips since then, but this first one is especially vivid. Maybe because it had a special place in my memories as the first one I’d ever planned and so many things didn’t go as intended, or maybe because I’d spent the time to reorganise and write down my thoughts about it. Either way, I was swept up in the nostalgia and committed myself to publishing a post for the next solo trip I did, which was this one.

I’m glad I did, because even though I usually keep a travel journal while travelling (without editing it after I return), it always felt like some pieces were missing or incoherent when I went back to read about some of the earlier trips I’d done. It’s easy to miss out on penning down some of the small but wonderful moments, the little things and details and mini-reflections that help to evoke a stronger image of the mood and thoughts I had back then. Plus, I didn’t go through the process of picking out and attaching photos to the journal, so the album and the writing were missing that crucial connection.

Anyway, enough of that. I actually added an afterword section because there were still some things and more general thoughts for the overall trip that I wanted to mention or highlight, but which didn’t quite fit in anywhere specific.

First, life in the Mongolian countryside is beautiful, but incredibly tough. As a city boy I can see how it can be a very spiritually fulfilling way of living. But economically, and if we were to try and quantify an objective standard of living, it’s a difficult life. All those things about hard beds, no showers, pit latrines, and having to offroad for hours to get to the nearest town are the constant daily reality in the countryside all year round. And this was in the summer, which I assume is the easier part of the year. With herding and hunting, it’s possible to make a living above subsistence levels, but not by very much. The nomads and other countryside folk that we met throughout our journey were so resourceful at living off the land and in touch with nature, though you could see the influence of modern technology (solar panels for power, satellite dishes for television, motorcycles for herding animals, and access to hospitals for childbirth and medical care) improving their lives in small but impactful ways.

The cities, Ulaanbaatar primarily, is where you have to go if you want to seek a better, easier life with modern comforts. And many Mongolians have, and are continuing to do that over the years—the population there has tripled over the last thirty years. But moving from a nomadic lifestyle to an urban one is not an easy transition. I’m not big on doing poverty tourism, so I didn’t specifically seek out any slum areas during this trip, but the reality is that two-thirds of Ulaanbaatar residents stay in “ger districts” with very limited infrastructure, not in permanent housing with its associated utilities and facilities. The standard of living does not immediately seem that different from the countryside; you’re just closer to the city so that working there and maybe climbing the socioeconomic ladder becomes possible, and the air is very, very bad.

Within the city, the cost of living relative to average incomes is also very high. B shared that the median income in Mongolia was about US$500 a month, which was approximately the rent for an apartment in the city centre (it’s not hard to see why the ger districts exist). For the two weeks he spent with us as a driver, B was paid roughly US$1,000, though it’s worth noting that the vehicle and maintenance costs are borne entirely by him (I don’t know if he ultimately received additional compensation for doubling up as a driver-guide during our tour). It’s apparently very common for people, both in the countryside and city, to take up side jobs to get by.

Mongolia is vast. Everyone knows this, and we can easily see the numbers to quantify exactly how big, but the sheer scale combined with the emptiness of the countryside is an entire unique feeling by itself. You can drive for hours and hours and basically not get anywhere. We covered 2,600 km while driving over two weeks, which is roughly 14x the entire coastline of Singapore. And even with this, the land area enclosed by our driving route is only some 10% of Mongolia.

It was the small, spontaneous moments and moods that I enjoyed the most. In particular—and I’ve already mentioned this a lot by now—the times with a campfire, starry night, flowing river, middle of nowhere, some lamb and vodka, spent just sitting around under some blankets shooting the shit were my favourite. It frustrates me that I can’t seem to describe or convey the feeling in a satisfactory manner, but maybe that’s what makes it so special to me. Shamans, horses, festivals, and all those other things were cool experiences, but the memories I have of these moments are what I treasure the most, and what’ll ultimately bring me back to Mongolia.

As with everything else in life, people are the best and worst parts. I’m really thankful to everyone in the group—A, B, R, M, and T—, the number of other travellers from around the world that we met and conversed with while on our trip, and of course the kind and welcoming local folk, especially carpenter man, for making this journey. Travelling together with a group in close proximity for two weeks was not all smooth, in fact definitely much less so than the impression one might get from just reading through this post, but ultimately I think the blend of personalities, of spontaneity and restraint, insanity and groundedness, alcoholism and, er, well I guess that was something we all had in common, as well as the life experiences and perspectives that each of us brought and shared with each other during this trip made it possible for us to enjoy the time we had in Mongolia to the fullest.

The bread in Mongolia is bad. It may seem odd for me to call this out specifically, but that’s just how bad it was. Hard and crumbly so it was a pain to slice or chew, and not a lot of taste. Our use of jam, nutella, and other random spreads throughout the trip was very liberal. I don’t know where this bread comes from or why it’s so bad. But trust me on this, it’s bad. If you visit, try it once, and then be glad that most of their dishes are meat and not bread.

Now on to some more inward-facing thoughts. The shaman said that I should know the meaning of my life or my dreams by the time I leave Mongolia, but I don’t think I’m any closer. One might think that all of these experiences that I’ve had might make me a more “enriched” person, or give me a fresh perspective on things, but actually, not really. I think personally, nothing’s really changed. The trip was fun, I had a great time, but now that it’s over, I have all these fantastic memories but I fundamentally still feel like the same person. I don’t feel particularly inclined to change anything about my life or do anything differently—the most I can say probably is that I have some inspirations for future travels that I want to do.

Clothes-wise, I did not pack very smartly for this trip. I get cold very easily, and reading about how it still got into the single digits in the Mongolian summer, I brought a lot of warmer layers. Which was good, because I did indeed get cold often, but the thing about warmer layers is that you can rewear them for quite long, so there were a few layers that ended up untouched. It still got rather hot during the day, so I spent most of my time in just a single shirt, and I’d only brought three shirts for hot-weather use. So I had to make do with each shirt for an average of six days. Also, during the trip I lost one travel towel and one bungee cord (I’d put it up to dry after showering in Kharkhorin and forgot to pack it up when leaving), but nothing else other than that, so I count that as a win.

I stopped fretting so much about it after the first few days, but in fact my sleep quality during the entire trip was very poor. Back home I average seven hours of sleep with a sleep score of about 80, but during these two weeks I only clocked six hours a night, and my sleep score dipped to 45. Another interesting statistic: My resting heart rate typically sits around 45–50 BPM, but went up to about 55–60 BPM during the trip (it’s back to normal now, maybe it’s the higher altitude and thinner air?). I’m happy to report, though, that I was able to come back from the trip with the same weight as when I’d left.

I do a Japanese anki deck every day, and was fortunately able to keep up this routine for most of the trip (I missed a few days here and there). But my regular thrice-weekly workouts did not fare as well—I only got in three workouts total over the 17 days, though part of it was because I’d injured my wrist right before the trip and was trying not to exacerbate it. In exchange, though, I made it through two and a half books during my time in Mongolia (my normal cadence is one book every two to three weeks).

And lastly: T testified that over the fourteen nights we spent together, she never once heard me snore, though with the caveat that first, she’s a much deeper and quicker sleeper than I am, and second, B was so loud anyway that you would have a lot of difficulty hearing anyone else snore.