Where to stay

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Travel Information

GETTING THERE

Aeroflot (020 7355 2233,aeroflot.co.uk) operates regular flights to Ulaanbaatar via Moscow.

Korean Air (0800 413000, koreanair.com) operates regular flights to Ulaanabaatar via Seoul.

MIAT Mongolian Airlines (00 976 11 379935, miat.com)

Eznis Airways (00 976 11 333311, eznisairways.com) operate internal flights from Ulaanbaatar to Mörön.

RESOURCES

Discover Mongolia (mongoliatourism.gov.mn) is the official tourist website of Mongolia and provides information about the region.

Embassy of Mongolia (020 7937 0150, embassyofmongolia.co.uk) provides an online visa service; single entry is £40, double entry £55.

Where to eat

Food Glossary

Airag: fermented mare’s milk
Bantan: a creamy beef or mutton soup that works wonders after too much vodka.
Boodog: skinned goat, stuffed with hot stones, herbs and onions and grilled over an open fire. A smaller version can be made with a marmot carcass.
Borts: meat dried in strips, for use during winter.
Buuz: Mongolian dumplings. Varieties include fried (thin dough rectangles, stuffed with mutton, fried in ghee) and steamed (minced lamb discs, pierced and steamed in their own juices).
Guriltai shul: meat soup with potatoes, onions and noodles. Horhog jointed mutton or goat slow cooked in a large metal urn with hot stones, onions, water and parsley. The hot stones are then passed from hand to hand for warmth and luck.
Huushuur: meat pasties, made with garlic and onion, deepfried in a wok.
Öröm: or üürag, cow’s or yak’s milk heated for 24 hours until it thickens, rather like clotted cream.
Pyartan: similar to guriltai shok, but with dough rectangles rather than noodles.
Shimiin arkhi: ‘milk vodka’ – distilled airag, with an alcohol content of around 12 per cent.
Shulla: spicy meat stew with cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and fresh ginger cooked in an earthenware pot with chickpeas and served with rice.
Suutei tsai: salty tea – a classic Mongolian drink.

Food and Travel Review

We rode over the mountain to meet the Reindeer People at dusk. Ganbaa, one of Mongolia’s five shamans, greeted us warmly, instructing his wife and daughters to offer fresh home-made bread, curds and tea with reindeer milk. The curious animals grouped round the door of the teepee, nudging horns to get a better view. Our horses had picked their way through larch forests and blueberry bushes for seven hours to reach the remote settlement near Mongolia’s northern border with Russia. Rarely have refreshments been so welcome.

Unlike the rolling steppe grassland associated with Genghis Khan, the Taiga – the land of the Tsaatans – is dominated by lakes, forest and mountains. The Tsaatan, the world’s most southerly indigenous reindeer herders, originated in Tuva in Siberia, but the frontier is firmly closed nowadays, leaving 300 nomadic people in 44 family groups divorced from their roots. Although another couple of hundred Tsaatan live in local villages, their survival in the 21st century depends on intermarriage with neighbouring communities.

The visit to the Reindeer People was the first highlight of a two week trip on horseback, the only viable way to travel around on terrain with too many bogs for easy hiking. Mongolia, a country roughly the size of Western Europe, has less than three million people with nearly half living in the capital, Ulaanbaatar. Only a tiny proportion live in Taiga country, 10 hours’ ride on unmade roads beyond the small town of Mörön, the gateway airport to the far north. Ganbaa’s isolated settlement consisted of half a dozen teepees set up, at the height of the four-month summer season in mid-July, on a flat valley floor surrounded by snow-capped peaks. Teepees are more portable than the circular, white gers (yurts) used by the nomads on the steppe so the Tsaatan can move on up to 10 times a year in search of the best possible grazing. The satellite dish goes too, triggering Mongolian programming, much of it singing and dancing, on the boxy television set that holds centre stage in the teepee.

There are no other trappings of modern civilisation, no cooking facilities beyond a central wood-burning stove and basic aluminium pans. The community’s 80 domesticated reindeer provide transport and dairy products, but as sacred animals, they are not killed for meat. Protein comes from hunting wild game. There is a guest teepee, though visitors can sleep in their own tents if they prefer.

In the morning, Ganbaa, a 51-year-old grandfather, was hard at work carving decorative items from horn, mostly with a reindeer theme. The money earned from selling them, and from shaman ceremonies, is used to buy essentials like flour and salt from the outside world. The inaccessible Tsaatan communities are virtually uncharted territory as far as British tourists are concerned, but some Americans have been inspired to follow in the hoofprints of author Rupert Isaacson after the publication of The Horse Boy, his account of using shamanism to help his son alleviate autism.

Isaacson’s shaman is now hospitalised in Ulaanbaatar following a stroke, but we hoped to witness Ganbaa in action. Most shamans are selected and initiated in their teens, often following an illness such as epilepsy, but Ganbaa was only called as a conduit to the spirit world four years ago. A shaman’s duties include healing, blessing, protection, hunting and weather magic, but as darkness fell, our hopes began to fade. Then our guide was told to place 100,000 tögrögs (£50) on the shelf in front of the television, together with vodka, cigarettes and chocolates, and we filed into darkness to witness the sound of the ceremonial drum, a crescendo of incomprehensible words and a thud signifying the end of a trance. Sadly no spirits that night, though Ganbaa generously shared with us the vodka and chocolates they’d rejected.

In contrast to the mountains, the Darhad Valley, our next destination, is an enormous bowl showcasing Mongolia’s prized wide blue-sky horizons. Villages are few and very far between. Tsagaannuur and Renchinlhumbe, the largest in these parts, have simple wooden buildings and shops selling basic provisions, clothing, tools and rubberised riding cloaks against an extreme central Asian climate. The nomads live in isolated gers, with their mixed flocks of yaks, goats, sheep and ponies grazing nearby. In one of the gers, used as a travelling primary school, we saw 21 solemn, ruddy-cheeked children aged three to seven learning the basics from a cheerful teacher who’d been doing the job for 35 years. The state-financed school moves to a different area every three weeks, with the local pupils brought in daily by their parents, mostly on the backs of motorbikes from within a 10km radius.

Our journey was supported by 4x4s whenever possible, but there were sections that were only passable with pack animals to carry tents, food and Montag, our faithful chef. When Montag is not on tour, he works in an Italian restaurant in Ulaanbaatar; his menus, therefore, lead on pasta dishes, a ‘carb load’ for endurance riding and practical to cook on basic equipment in the wilderness. His carbonara, using the bulbous end of the fat-tailed sheep instead of bacon, was especially delicious and he often incorporated a Japanese element, with seaweed and rice elegantly presented.

On his night off, we were lucky to be invited to a ger for a boodog feast. Mongolian barbecue, served in bad restaurants in Ulaanbaatar and the Alps, is a foreign marketing invention, but this exotic dish is the real deal for special occasions. Slay one goat, remove fleece, bones and entrails, stuff with hot rocks, herbs and onions and grill over an open fire for three hours, singeing off any remaining hair with a blow torch. The guest of honour cuts into the carcass, often with some difficulty. Each guest receives a hot stone to toss from hand to hand for luck before the delectable broth from inside the carcass is served. The succulent meat, the cornerstone of a party that includes vodka toasts, follows, as does singing and dancing far into the night. Lesser celebrations are marked by the simpler horhog: chunks of meat from fat-tailed sheep, potatoes, carrots and onions cooked with stones in a metal churn.

After we left the Reindeer People, our route turned east towards the Jiglegiin Pass, the gateway to Khövsgöl Lake – the ‘dark blue pearl of Mongolia’. On the day we crossed the Darhad Valley, we covered 55km of great riding country on ponies bred for naadam racing, one of Mongolia’s three traditional sports – the others are wrestling and archery. Typically, ponies aged two and upwards, often ridden bareback by children with no shoes, follow a lead car over distances ranging from 12km to 32km to the winning post, so ours made nothing of 10km stretches at full gallop. Kites and vultures circled overhead at lunchtime as the ponies crossed a fiercely flowing river two at a time, perched precariously just above the water line on a man-hauled wooden ferry raft.

On the second day, we rode steadily upwards through glades in the forest richly carpeted with bright flowers, cresting the Jiglegiin Pass at tea time. Excitement rose at the distant sight of the huge, clear lake, 136km long and 36.5km wide, and we cracked on eagerly to swim in the pure, cold water before the cocktail hour. As a celebration for our last night in the wild, Montag prepared buuz, Mongolia’s signature steamed dumplings stuffed with mutton, kneading and rolling the dough until the consistency was perfect. We ate in idyllic surroundings, the evening mist over the water fading towards the distant mountains on the opposite shore.

Our final ride followed the western bank on the kind of deserted trail we’d become accustomed to, but in northern Mongolian terms, Khövsgöl is an emerging tourist honeypot. As we approached the Blue Pearl ger camp, one of several chillout establishments within easy access of Hatgal, the small town at the southern end of the lake, civilisation gradually kicked in. No worries there: ger living is very comfortable, with beds round the circular side, brightly coloured rugs and furniture and a wood burning stove in the centre. The Blue Pearl has a shower block with hot water, massage for £18 an hour and a restaurant and bar in a wooden building. By day, guests go kayaking on the lake, hike or ride along the shore or fish for grayling, catfish and freshwater cod. Luckily for them, the giant taimen, Mongolia’s predator from the salmon family, doesn’t live in the lake, but anglers can hunt it in rivers nearby. By night, the restaurant offers fresh fish, lamb and the chance to discuss your travels with visitors from around the world; lively debate guaranteed.

Nomad’s Land - Taiga