🌏 Asia · Central Asia
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Best Things to Do in Mongolia
Eagle hunters charging across the Altai steppe, snow leopards in the wild, singing sand dunes in the Gobi, and the most epic sporting festival you've never heard of.
Eagle hunters charging across the Altai steppe, snow leopards in the wild, singing sand dunes in the Gobi, and the most epic sporting festival you've never heard of.
Mongolia is the world's most sparsely populated country — 3 million people in a territory the size of Western Europe — and the emptiness is the point. The steppe rolls to every horizon without a fence, a road, or a building in sight. In winter the temperature drops to -40°C. In summer the Gobi Desert reaches 50°C. Between those extremes lies one of the most extraordinary travel destinations on Earth: a country where nomadic culture is not a tourist performance but a living reality, where the Golden Eagle Festival is still won by the same Kazakh families who have trained eagles for a thousand years, and where the snow leopard still roams the Altai in genuine wildness.
The Golden Eagle Festival in Ölgii, western Mongolia, is one of the most visually spectacular cultural events on Earth — hundreds of Kazakh eagle hunters on horseback, dressed in traditional fox-fur hats and embroidered deels, charging across the Altai valley floor with trained golden eagles on their arms. The eagles are released from a high ridge to fly to their handler below; the competitions judge speed, agility, and the bond between hunter and bird. It is a tradition that has been practised in these mountains for over a thousand years.
The Kazakh people of Bayan-Ölgii Province in western Mongolia are the last large community of active eagle hunters in the world. The golden eagles — females, which are larger, can have a 2.5-metre wingspan — are trained from eaglets and spend up to a decade with their hunters before being released back to the wild. The festival also includes horse racing, traditional Kazakh games, and competitions in traditional dress and crafts. The backdrop of the snow-capped Altai Mountains makes the setting as dramatic as the events themselves.
Ölgii is a 2-hour domestic flight from Ulaanbaatar — there are no paved roads connecting western Mongolia to the capital. The festival is held in early October. Accommodation is extremely limited during festival week; book months in advance through a specialist Mongolia tour operator. The Mongolian Altai Tours website lists festival dates and packages that include flights, accommodation, and guided access to the eagle hunters' families.
Mongolia is one of the best places on Earth to see a wild snow leopard. The country holds an estimated 1,000–1,500 individuals — one of the world's largest populations — across the Altai, Khangai, and Khuvsgul mountain ranges. The snow leopard is one of the most elusive large mammals in the world: a solitary, mostly nocturnal predator that moves through steep rocky terrain at altitude. Camera trap studies and decades of local herder knowledge have mapped their movement corridors, and specialist expeditions use this intelligence to maximise genuine sighting chances.
Snow leopard expeditions in Mongolia are led by expert trackers who work with local herder communities — the same families whose livestock are occasionally predated by the cats, and who have developed a nuanced understanding of their behaviour and territories. The expeditions typically last 7–14 days in February or March when snow makes tracking easier and the cats are more visible against the white landscape. Sightings are never guaranteed — this is genuinely wild tracking, not a managed encounter — but the chance is real, and the mountain landscapes of the western Altai are spectacular regardless of whether the leopard appears.
Mongolia accounts for roughly 10% of the global snow leopard population. The primary range is the Altai-Sayan ecoregion in western Mongolia, with secondary populations in the Khangai Mountains (central Mongolia) and the Khuvsgul Mountains (north). The South Gobi also holds a small population in its rocky outcrops. February–March expeditions coincide with the breeding season when the cats are more active and vocally communicative.
The Gobi Desert is not what most visitors expect. It is not a sea of sand — it is a vast, dramatic landscape of stone desert, rocky canyons, saxaul forest, and gravel plain, with three specific sites that are genuinely extraordinary. The Flaming Cliffs (Bayanzag) are where American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews discovered the world's first dinosaur nest eggs in 1923 — red sandstone formations that glow at sunset like burning rock. Khongoryn Els are the singing sand dunes, 180km long and up to 200 metres high, that hum in the wind with a sound early travellers described as music. Yolyn Am is a narrow canyon so deep that ice persists year-round in its shadows even in the Gobi's scorching summer.
A 6-day guided Gobi tour from Ulaanbaatar covers all three of these sites plus nomadic ger camp stays, camel riding across the dunes, fossil hunting at the Flaming Cliffs, and the specific experience of standing on the Gobi plain in complete silence with nothing visible on the horizon in any direction — one of the few places in the world where that is possible. The scale and silence of the Gobi is something that photographs cannot convey.
Most guided tours from Ulaanbaatar include a domestic flight to Dalanzadgad (1 hour) followed by 4WD vehicle travel to the main sites. All accommodation is in traditional ger camps. The GetYourGuide 6-day tour is one of the most highly-rated Gobi itineraries available, covering all the major sites with experienced English-speaking guides.
The Genghis Khan Equestrian Statue at Tsonjin Boldog, 54km east of Ulaanbaatar, is the world's largest equestrian statue — a 40-metre chrome figure of Chinggis Khaan on horseback, positioned on a rolling hilltop of open steppe with the Mongolian sky stretching above and the Tuul River valley below. You can climb through the horse's chest to the statue's head for panoramic views across the steppe. The scale — both of the statue itself and of the landscape it commands — is genuinely awe-inspiring.
Ulaanbaatar itself is a city of dramatic contrasts — Soviet-era apartment blocks alongside glass towers, Buddhist monasteries alongside contemporary art galleries, and the Sukhbaatar Square at the city's heart dominated by a huge Genghis Khan memorial. The Gandan Monastery (Gandantegchinlen Khiid) is the most important Buddhist monastery in Mongolia and a living religious centre — monks in saffron robes conduct daily ceremonies in a complex that survived the Soviet-era suppression of religion. The National Museum of Mongolia traces 2,000 years of nomadic civilisation from the Xiongnu to the present.
The Genghis Khan statue is typically combined with a visit to Gorkhi-Terelj National Park — granite mountains, river valleys, and ger camps just 70km from Ulaanbaatar. The Turtle Rock (Melkhii Khad) formation and the Ariyabal Meditation Temple (a 108-step climb to a hilltop monastery) are the highlights. The Viator day tour covers all three sites with hotel pickup included.
The Naadam Festival is Mongolia's national celebration — held every year from July 11–13 in Ulaanbaatar, it is the country's most important cultural event, the equivalent of the Olympics in terms of national significance but rooted in a tradition that predates Genghis Khan. The Three Games of Naadam — Mongolian wrestling (bokh), horse racing (uraldag), and archery (sur kharvaakh) — were traditionally the measures of a warrior's worth. The opening ceremony at the National Stadium is an extraordinary spectacle: mounted warriors in full historical armour, throat singers, traditional dancers, and the entrance of the nine white horsetail banners of Genghis Khan.
The horse racing takes place on the open steppe outside Ulaanbaatar — children aged 5–12 ride horses over distances of 15–30km, a tradition that reflects the centrality of the horse to Mongolian nomadic culture. The wrestlers compete in elimination bouts in the stadium, dressed in traditional zodog (open-chested jacket) and shuudag (tight shorts), performing the eagle dance after each victory. The archery competition uses traditional composite bows with targets at 75 metres — competitors wear traditional national dress throughout. Naadam is genuinely unlike any other festival in the world.
The Viator 10-day tour combines the Naadam Festival experience with a Gobi Desert extension — attending the festival opening ceremony and main events in Ulaanbaatar before flying south to the Gobi. This is the most popular Mongolia itinerary for international visitors and combines the country's two most iconic experiences in a single trip.
Mongolia has extreme seasons — planning around the right window makes an enormous difference.
