Picturesque Gobi Tour
White cliffs, the ice in Yol valley, the Flaming Cliffs where the first dinosaur eggs came out of the ground, and the singing dunes of Khongor.
Emptiness, and what is in it
Mongolia is known above all for Chinggis Khaan and its fine breeds of horses. It is also one of the least densely populated countries in the world, with only about two people per square kilometre. Much of the land is hard to live on, and the country is bordered only by Russia and China, which goes a long way towards explaining its low population, although a fast-growing population could change that in the coming years. In the Gobi you feel the emptiness and untouched nature. This tour covers the highlights of the Gobi in six days.
Day by Day
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.
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.
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. Ongi monastery is the ruin of a large monastery on the bank of the Ongi river, in Saikhan Ovoo soum of Dundgovi province. It had 28 temples and other buildings, and about 1,000 lamas lived there before it was destroyed in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. Some of its stupas are still standing.
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.
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.
After some horse riding, we drive back to Ulaanbaatar.
