Mongolia begins two hours past Ulaanbaatar.
Which Terelj day gets you past the ger camps. What a Gobi week actually costs. Whether the Chinggis Khaan statue fills an afternoon or twenty minutes. Every tour in the country, reviewed.
Terelj, the Gobi, and the places Mongolia trips are built around.
Almost every tour leaves Ulaanbaatar, so what separates them is where they point: an afternoon in a granite valley, a week of driving south, or a monastery standing on the grass of the old capital.
Terelj: pick the day that fits.
The whole Terelj list →
Granite the shape of a sleeping turtle, a monastery up a long staircase in the pines, and horses to hire by the hour. Most Terelj days stop at the Chinggis Khaan statue on the way out of town, which is why the two names keep appearing together.
Statue, valley, back by dinner
Out past the statue complex in the morning, lunch in the valley, Turtle Rock and the Aryabal staircase in the afternoon, back in Ulaanbaatar before the light goes.
Terelj at the pace it was crossed
Mongolian horses are short, hardy and ridden on a loose rein. Two or three hours is enough to get past the camps and into the side valleys where nobody is parked.
Turtle Rock, Aryabal and a ger night
Staying over turns the valley from a car park into a place. The light goes long about eight, the day visitors drive off, and the granite holds the heat well past dark.
What travellers in Ulaanbaatar end up booking.
See them all →One day trip out to the statue complex outsells everything else in the country by a distance. These are the tours people actually put money on.
1
Genghis Khan Statue NationalPark CamelRide
Review of Mongolia’s Genghis Khan statue and Terelj tour, with camel rides, eagle photos, lunch in a ger, hiking, and practical tips.
From · $86
Read our review →
2
Genghis Khan Statue Day Tour+National Park+Camel Ride+Eagle
from $49
3
Central Mongolia Guided 3-Day Tour
from $400
4
Small Group 3-Day Best of Central Mongolia Tour
from $425
5
Chinggis Khaan Statue and Turtle Rock Day Tour
from $59
6
Semi Gobi and Ancient Kharkhorin Tour
from $270
7
Genghis Khan Tour – Mongolia’s #1 Daily Escape
from $49
8
Semi-Gobi Desert Day Trip & Camel Ride
from $175
The Gobi is two days of driving before anything looks like desert.
The semi-Gobi runs out of Ulaanbaatar and back inside a day, and it gives you sand, a camel and a photograph. The Gobi proper — the red cliffs at Bayanzag, the singing dunes at Khongor — is a week, a driver, and nights in camps with no signal.
What a day out of Ulaanbaatar costs.
Every tour on the site by price. A statue-and-steppe day runs about what dinner costs in the capital; a Gobi week is a different order of money entirely.
Half-days, city walking tours and a seat on the shared coach out to the statue complex.
The standard Ulaanbaatar day trip: vehicle, guide, lunch somewhere on the grass, back by evening.
Private jeeps, multi-day drives, and anything with a ger-camp night attached to it.
- 1Central Mongolia Guided 3-Day Tourfrom $400
- 2Small Group 3-Day Best of Central Mongolia Tourfrom $425
- 3Semi Gobi and Ancient Kharkhorin Tourfrom $270
Herding is a job in Mongolia, not a performance.
A large share of the country still moves with its animals twice a year. The visits below sit inside working households, which is why they run on the family’s day rather than yours.
Staying With a Herding Family
A ger is one round room: stove in the middle, beds around the wall, door facing south. Guests sit on the west side. Dried curd and salted milk tea arrive within a minute of you sitting down, and the bowl is passed with the right hand. Overnight stays run from late spring to early autumn, while the camp is somewhere a vehicle can still reach.
- 1Cooking Class in a Traditional Ger Home in Ulaanbaatar Suburbs★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 84 reviews
- 2MONGOLIAN NOMADS: 2-Day Horse Trekking & Cow Milking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 23 reviews
- 3Overnight Semi-Gobi Tour with Nomadic HomeStay★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 6 reviews
Half a Day on a Mongolian Horse
Mongolian horses stand around thirteen hands, live outdoors through a minus-thirty winter, and are worked rather than pampered. The saddle is wooden, the stirrups sit short, and the herder in front of you started this before he could walk. Most Terelj rides run two to four hours, which is roughly how long a first-timer’s legs last.
- 1Horseback Riding Tour to Turtle Rock & Aryabal★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 54 reviews
- 2Terelj National Park: Tour with horse riding and hiking★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 46 reviews
- 3Horse riding experience in Terelj National park 1 day★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 30 reviews
Camel Riding in the Semi-Gobi
The Bactrian camel is a Gobi animal: two humps, a winter coat it sheds in sheets every spring, and a walk that rolls you side to side. Rides out of the semi-Gobi camps are short, twenty minutes to an hour, and the animals belong to the family whose camp you are standing in.
- 1Genghis Khan Statue NationalPark CamelRide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 353 reviews
- 2Genghis Khan Statue Day Tour+National Park+Camel Ride+Eagle★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 261 reviews
- 3Semi-Gobi Desert Day Trip & Camel Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 92 reviews
Mongolia’s season is about fourteen weeks long.
June to early September is when the grass is green, the camps are pitched and the tracks out of Ulaanbaatar are passable without winter kit. Naadam takes over the middle of July, with wrestling, archery and horse racing across the country. Outside that window many ger camps fold up and the multi-day drives stop running.
- 1Central Mongolia Guided 3-Day Tourfrom $400
- 2Small Group 3-Day Best of Central Mongolia Tourfrom $425
- 3Semi Gobi and Ancient Kharkhorin Tourfrom $270
Book these before you fly to Ulaanbaatar.
Half of Mongolia can be arranged from a hotel lobby the night before. These cannot. They need a vehicle, a driver and beds in a camp several hundred kilometres from the nearest town.
- 01Central Mongolia Guided 3-Day TourFixed departures built around a driver, a guide and camp beds. Midsummer runs go weeks ahead.
- 02Best 6-Day Gobi Tour Discover MongoliaDays of driving arranged around fuel, a cook and a route with almost no towns on it.
- 03Overnight Semi-Gobi Tour with Nomadic HomeStayA herding family hosts one party at a time. The night is either free or it is not.
- 04Traditional Music and Dance Performance TicketThe performance runs to a set evening calendar rather than on demand.
By place — where the day ends up
Terelj National Park44 tours
Chinggis Khaan Statue38 tours
The Gobi43 tours
Central Mongolia32 tours- Kharkhorin13 tours
Hustai10 tours
Ulaanbaatar9 tours- Everything, unsorted →
The route almost every first Mongolia trip follows.
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