Camel Festival Tour
Two days at the Gobi camel festival, with a nomadic family, the Flaming Cliffs, the Khongor dunes, Yol valley and the rock art at Del mountain around it.
The Bactrian camel festival
The Camel Festival is one of the biggest events in Mongolia. It has been held every year since 1997 to support sustainable tourism, help the local community grow its herds and protect the Bactrian camel. The Bactrian camel is a large, even-toed ungulate native to the steppes of eastern Asia. Unlike the one-humped dromedary it has two humps, and it is a hardy, cold-climate animal with two coats: a warm inner layer of down and a long, rough outer coat. Mongolians have kept camels for thousands of years, and camel wool makes very warm clothes. In 2016 the Gobi hosted the largest camel race ever held: 1,108 camels and their jockeys raced over 15 kilometres, and the fastest finished in 35 minutes 12 seconds. The race was organised to encourage the breeding and use of domestic camels in Mongolia, and it set a Guinness World Record. This tour is a chance to explore the beautiful Gobi and enjoy the camel festival.
Day by Day
Mongolia is one of the last places in the world where nomadic herding is still a common way of life. We visit a nomadic family to experience the real culture of Mongolian nomads, and see how they herd their livestock and make dairy products and traditional clothes. You are welcome to play traditional games, have a Mongolian supper with the family, and ask them anything you like.
The Flaming Cliffs are in Umnugovi, the South Gobi province. Their Mongolian name, Bayanzag, means "rich in saxaul", an endangered Central Asian tree 2 to 9 metres tall whose roots protect the soil from erosion. Important palaeontological discoveries have been made here, above all by the American Roy Chapman Andrews in the 1920s: fossilised dinosaur eggs and specimens of Velociraptor. The nickname "Flaming Cliffs" comes from the orange-red rock of the cliffs. Today is the first day of the camel festival: we see the opening ceremony, the camel parade, camel polo and the race for two-year-old camels.
Today we see the adult camel race, camel polo, the contest for the most beautiful camel, a camel training display and the closing ceremony.
The Khongor sand dunes in Sevrei soum are the largest and most spectacular dunes in Mongolia. Known as the "singing dunes", they are up to 300 metres high, 20 kilometres wide and about 100 kilometres long. They are bordered by lush green vegetation along the small Khongor river, which is fed by underground springs from the surrounding mountains.
Yol valley lies in the north-east of the Zuun Saikhan mountains and has been one of the main attractions of the Gobi for decades. Very wide at the entrance, it gradually narrows into a remarkable gorge. In spring a thick corridor of ice two or three kilometres long winds through the gorge, and it often lasts into July. We also walk into Mukhar Shivert canyon, where a frozen waterfall stands for most of the year.
Del mountain, in Ulziit soum of Dundgovi province, is a large open-air gallery. There are about 3,000 ancient rock paintings and four Runic inscriptions on its rocks, as well as 20 rectangular tombs nearby. Most of the paintings date from the Bronze and Iron Ages and show wolves, ibex, foxes, groups of people riding horses, camels and gers.
The scarp of Tsagaan Suvarga is in Ulziit soum of Dundgovi province. Its sheer east-facing slope looks like the ruins of an ancient city from a distance. The cliff is 30 metres high and 100 metres wide, and the wind has shaped it over thousands of years. It was once the floor of a sea, and the different colours in the rock are layers of sediment laid down over millions of years. Afterwards we drive back to Ulaanbaatar.
