TIPS: Mongolia Travel

We spent about 2 weeks in Mongolia, focusing on the Gobi Desert and Central Mongolia, and with a couple of days leftover in UB city. I travelled to Mongolia with 2 friends (they flew from Singapore and I met them in Beijing for the connecting flight). Mongolia is a place you could potentially solo (there are group trips you can join as a solo traveller) but I would personally prefer to do it with friends. The ride from the airport to the city is long (can be 2h with traffic) and also costly if you take a private car (USD 25 - 30 each way). The drives out of the city to visit sites are also long and bumpy, so I was happy to have friends to chat with / to commiserate with haha.

Seasons

Ulaanbatar is known for being the coldest capital in the world. We went in Spring (April), which is still low season in Mongolia. The tourist season typically starts around May and peaks for the summer and autumn periods. Not all tourist facilities were up yet and we saw some tourist ger camps being built. Travelling in April, however, means you see very few other people out and about at the sites! Be prepared for the cold, regardless of which season you travel in.

Tours and Accomodation

Mongolia tour routes: Tourists travelling out of the cities in Mongolia typically take a tour. After all, exploring Mongolia requires offroad driving in areas with no road signs. It is amazing how the drivers know which route to take. There are generally 3 main tour routes that people take: (1) Gobi Desert and Central Mongolia, (2) Reindeers in the North with the Tsaatan, (3) Eagle hunters in the Altai Mountains in the West. We went on a Gobi Desert and Central Mongolia with Sunpath Mongolia. There are Singapore organisers who plan group trips to Mongolia, however these tend to be marked up at a much higher price. My own preference when going with friends would be to book direct with a local provider.

For the tour with Sunpath, you can a choice of staying in nomad family gers (aka gers owned by the families themselves with more basic facilities and no showers) or tourist gers (more facilities including showers but a less personalised experience). We stayed in the nomad family gers throughout our trip, and I felt this made sense for us and I enjoyed this as a key aim of the trip for me was to see how the nomads lived - so it felt like a much more authentic experience and you know where the money is going to. The toilet setup at each ger was interesting and varied - if you go for outdoor activities in SEA it is better than that and you’ll be more than fine (like there actually is a toilet) - but for most Singaporeans who don’t do these trips something to be prepared for! We showered 3 times over the course of our tour, which felt fine since it is so cold anyway.

Another tour agency we came across is also Zaya tours. We did not go with this group but we did stay at their hostel and think it is well worth the price. You can get a nice private room with shared toilets, and the location is good. For our remaining days in Ulaanbatar post tour we stayed in a comfortable Airbnb near the university for good proximity to sights of interest + our own toilet and access to washing machines.

On whether to travel via an organised trip or not, I had been researching into whether it was possible to do a self organised trip other than a tour. Based on other backpacker feedback from reddit, more people generally choose to go with tours or at least to get a driver, given that it is difficult to navigate routes offroad. However, some people did travel between cities on their own e.g. taking a train to Erdenet, the second largest city in Mongolia after Ulaanbataar.

Other logistics

We bought our esim on shopee and it worked well! You could also get a physical sim from the airport once you arrive, but there may be queues. I had thought of getting a physical sim from a shop once we reached the city centre, but found it to be slightly more challenging to locate the shop also given our limited time on the first day.

Similar to both Beijing and Almaty, you don’t need to carry a lot of cash in Ulaanbatar as most places accept card payments. Just exchange enough cash for expenditure out of the cities and for tips.

If you are not a huge meat eater, the food in Mongolia may be an acquired taste. However, look out for their seabuckthorn drink! Seabuckthorn is a super fruit from Mongolia with many health benefits. Our guides would buy a juice concentrate and we would have it with our meals. We also carried with us a little jar of spicy enoki mushrooms (I’m guessing imported from China) which were an easy yummy addition to our rice or noodle dishes. You can get a pretty wide range of imported products in Mongolia. We found snacks and drinks in the supermarkets from China, Korea and also Europe.

What we saw in Ulaanbatar

We visited the Chinggis Khan National Musuem, which was extremely useful in educating us on the Mongol Empire, something that I had very little knowledge of. We actually spent quite a few hours here - bring your phone along as you can scan QR codes around the exhibits to get the English desccriptions.

If you search online for Naraantuul market, it sounds intimidating but if you’ve been to other markets in Asia it really is not. It feels like a huge massive pasar malam. Be aware of your belongings amidst the crowd of course but there is no need to join a tour for it, you can go by on your own. The part that we enjoyed most was seeing the items and materials needed to make a ger consolidated there, including both the furniture for inside the ger and the plastic covering outside the ger. We took UBCab to get there from the city. We had no issue getting a cab there, but had to wait quite a while when trying to get a cab back to our accomodation - but i suppose in the worst case scenario we would have just walked the 45min it would have taken for us to get back. On shopping in Naraantuul market, I read online you can haggle, but honestly the prices quoted to us for things like shoe bag and cap which my friends got were cheap.

Funfact that Mongolia has some pretty good cafes and coffee places, you can easily search for these on google maps.

Things to buy

If you are planning to visit other cold countries, check out Gobi Cashmere which has a few stores around the city. Well worth the price as the international price for online sales is much higher.

If you visit the state department store, it is well worth checking out the outdoor clothing shops there as you can get pretty decent rates for the items there (vs singapore prices of course). We found montbell shirts there to be the equivalent from buying it in Japan.

Solo Tips

If I did go to Mongolia solo, I would stay in Zaya hostel again - I think their private rooms are convenient and well worth the price.

Sunpath also organises group tours (check their website for the season / dates) which solo travellers can join in to so those are a good option.