Northern Exposure

After lunch, visit the Gandan Khiid monastery, which houses a sublime 26-metre, burnished copper statue of Avalokitesvara; the Winter Palace at Bogd Khan, a beautiful antique, Tibetan-style residence where the emperor used to pass the cold season; and the Choijin Lama Temple, former seat of the state Oracle.  For an expansive view over the capital, you might also wish scale Zaisan Hill, on the south side of the city, where a USSR-funded war memorial surveys an impressive sweep of suburbs and steppe – a great spot for sunset.

Amarbayasgalant Khiid is associated with the legendary monk Zanazabar, who died here in the early 18th century. It occupies a dramatic spot surrounded by mountains and rolling steppe, best appreciated from the shrine on the ridge just behind the complex. Tonight, you’ll spend your first night on the road under canvas in a traditional Mongolian ger close to the monastery.

Your tour continues in a northwesterly direction on day 6, traversing Bulgan Province, a region of dense pine forest alternating with open pastureland grazed by more than a million animals in summer. Once again, you’ll be overnighting in a ger camp in the middle of nowhere – great for star gazing!

Camp, fish for salmon and sturgeon, and ride horses around the shores of. Over 85 miles (135km) long and 260 metres deep, Lake Khovsgol – or ‘Khovsgol Nuur’ –  is among the largest bodies of freshwater in the world and forms the focal point of a magnificent national park where ibex, elk, wolf, wolverine, bears and sable are all protected. In the summer, a steady flow of visitors ventures up to its remote shores to camp, fish for salmon and sturgeon and ride horses into the vast wilderness stretching towards the Siberian border.

To the west of Khovsgol Nuur, the empty Darkhad Depression is the homeland of Mongolia’s last reindeer herders, the Tsaatan: 44 families still live in the traditional nomadic way around this pine-speckled plain, moving five or six times each year between camps at different altitudes. They inhabit conical, tepee-style tents called ortz, which are made from birch bark, animal hides, bones and wood. You’ll have lunch beside a wild, remote lake before returning to camp.

Deep in the heart of the Khargai Mountains lies this exquisitely beautiful freshwater lake, formed millions of years ago when lava flows blocked the Suman River, a tributary of the Chuluut. The best views over Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur (literally ‘Great White Lake’) and its epic hinterland are to be had from the rim of an extinct volcanic crater at the eastern end of the lake – the Khorgo. Yurt camps strung along the northern shore provide idyllic bases from which to ride on horseback into the surrounding grassland.

You’ll arrive at camp in time to pay a visit to the nearby Zayan Gegeen monastery, founded in the 17th century, and home to over a thousand monks before it was closed during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. The views from the buildings over the surrounding grasslands are fabulous.

The dramatic Orkha Valley in central Mongolia, where the foothills of the Khangai Mountains peter into the steppes, served as the site of the Mongol capital before it moved to Peking in 1264. The region’s Turkic rulers believed their right to rule derived from the sacred forest-mountain, Otuken, in whose shadow the tribes used to make their summer capitals. Dressed stone from the site was used to construct a splendid Tibetan-style monastery, Erdene Zuu, which still stands, having been restored since its destruction in 1939 by the Communist regime. Only a few of the 64 original shrines survive, along with the massive, stupa-studded perimeter wall, but it’s still a wonderfully romantic spot.

Like an eagle’s eerie, Tuvkhun Khiid sits at an elevated site among some crags, facing a splendid sweep of forest and undulating steppe. You’ll spend the night lower down the mountain in a beautifully situated ger camp.

In summer rare species of wildfowl, including cape barren goose, spoonbill and Dalmatian pelican congregate on this wild lake. Your night halt is in a ger camp on the shore.