All of Mongolia

Mongolia is an independent country in the very heart of Asia, between China and Russia, and it seems to hold every kind of land there is: the mountains of the Altai in the west, wide plains and steppe, semi-desert and the Gobi. It is the homeland of Chinggis Khaan, who in the early 13th century led the Mongols to build an empire stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea.

Flying in, you look down for a road, a track, a house, and find only bare hills and gentle folds of land. Then, all at once, a shining river, a straight road and a city: Ulaanbaatar, where our journey begins.

This trip is given entirely to Mongolia, its people, its deserts and its mountains, at the pace of the country. We travel overland as much as we can and, whenever possible, sleep in the gers of nomad families we meet on the way rather than in tourist camps. A visit to the National Museum, rich in prehistoric finds, is our first introduction. Then a domestic flight takes us to the town of Altai, and for about a week we explore the mountains of Gobi-Altai by 4x4, on foot and on horseback.

From the mountains we fly back to Ulaanbaatar for two days of Naadam, the national festival held every July since 1921 to mark the country’s independence. Wrestlers, archers and riders come from every province. Much of the festival is a long parade in which each group shows its own costumes and banners, followed by masked dances, music and singing; the old dances often re-enact ancient battles. Most moving of all is the long song, a single voice rising over the steppe. The high point is the wrestling and archery in the stadium, where thousands cheer the best athletes in the country, chosen in hundreds of regional bouts. The winning wrestler dances the eagle dance around a standard in the middle of the field.

We also see the capital: Gandan and Choijin Lama monasteries, the palace and museum of the Bogd Khan, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Zakh market. Then we head south across the Gobi to Bayanzag, where the dinosaur skeletons we saw in the museum were found. The Gobi shows all its faces: dunes, steppe and grassland, and the narrow Yol valley, where eagles nest and ice lasts into summer. Close to the Chinese border we turn north-west along faint tracks, with time to rest, walk and make detours to lakes, the Orkhon waterfall and monasteries, until we reach Kharkhorin, the old capital of the empire. Little is left of the city, but the nearby monastery of Erdene Zuu, with its 108 stupas, is magnificent.

Without hurrying we go west again to Terkhiin Tsagaan, a lake formed when a lava flow blocked a river, then back towards Ulaanbaatar through forested country full of yaks. There is still time for some shopping or an optional visit to Manzushir monastery before the flight home. Domestic flights depend on availability and may not be in the final programme.