Travel and Tourism in Mongolia

Khustain Nuruu National Park

The story of Przewalski's horse, known in Mongolian as the takhi, is one of the most remarkable conservation stories of the twentieth century, a narrative of extinction and rebirth that is still unfolding in the grasslands of central Mongolia. This small, stocky horse with its dun-colored coat and upright dark mane is the last truly wild horse species on earth, the genetic ancestor of all domestic horses but never itself domesticated, and it was declared extinct in the wild in the 1960s when the last known wild individuals disappeared from the Dzungarian Gobi in China. The entire world population of Przewalski's horses survived only in zoos, a remnant of perhaps a dozen bloodlines preserved in captivity.

Beginning in the 1990s, a collaborative program involving Mongolian conservationists and European zoos began reintroducing captive-bred takhi to their native Mongolian steppe in carefully selected locations. Khustain Nuruu National Park, established in 1993 specifically to support the reintroduction program, has become the most successful of these sites. The park now supports a free-ranging population of more than 300 Przewalski's horses living entirely wild in their native ecosystem, the largest self-sustaining wild population on earth. Watching a herd of takhi move across the steppe in the golden morning light, knowing that these animals represent the resurrection of a species from the brink of extinction, is one of the most emotionally affecting experiences available in Mongolia.

Naadam Festival

The Naadam Festival is the most important event in the Mongolian calendar, the central celebration of national identity, and one of the most spectacular sporting and cultural festivals in the world. Held annually on July 11 and 12 to commemorate the anniversary of the 1921 revolution that established the Mongolian People's Republic, and extended by several days of pre-festival and post-festival events that transform the capital into a city of celebration, Naadam has its roots in traditions of military display and physical competition that predate the Mongol Empire. The festival's Three Manly Games of wrestling, archery, and horse racing are not casual sporting events but living traditions that connect contemporary Mongolians directly to the competitive and martial culture of their nomadic ancestors.

Mongolian wrestling, called Bökh, is the most important and most spectacular of the three Naadam sports. Unlike the wrestling of most other traditions, Mongolian wrestling has no weight categories, no time limits, and no boundaries. Any part of the body above the knee touching the ground constitutes defeat, and matches can last anywhere from seconds to the better part of an hour depending on the skill and strategy of the competitors. The wrestlers compete in the most extraordinary costumes: tight brief-like shorts, a small jacket that covers the shoulders and upper arms but leaves the chest entirely exposed, and distinctive boots with curled-up toes. Before and after each match, the wrestlers perform the eagle dance, spreading their arms wide like wings and moving in a stylized evocation of the eagle's soaring flight. The champions of the Ulaanbaatar Naadam are given titles based on the number of rounds they have won, ranging from Falcon through Elephant to the highest honor of Titan, a title reserved for those who have won the full tournament, which requires defeating between 9 and 10 successive opponents.

The archery competition at Naadam is one of the few major sports in the world in which men and women compete side by side, with women shooting from a shorter distance but otherwise under the same conditions as the men. Mongolian archery uses a distinctive composite bow made from combinations of wood, horn, and sinew, a design that has been used on the steppe for thousands of years and that generates a snap and a power out of proportion to its relatively small size compared to the great longbows of other traditions. Competitors shoot at small cylindrical targets made of leather and lined up in rows, and the scoring is accompanied by a remarkable vocalization by judges who chant the score in a traditional manner. The arrow that strikes its target produces a sound, called the sound of the arrow, that is itself part of the aesthetics of the competition.

The horse racing at Naadam is the event that most dramatically illustrates the difference between Mongolian sporting culture and that of the rest of the world. The jockeys are children, typically between the ages of five and twelve, who race over a cross-country course that varies in length from fifteen to thirty kilometers depending on the age category of the horses. The children ride without saddles, wearing lightweight traditional costumes and brightly colored caps that allow spectators to identify them from a distance. The race is not simply an athletic competition but a test of the horses rather than the riders, and the children are chosen for their light weight and their skill rather than for any systematic training program. The sight of small children galloping across the Mongolian steppe on horses that are far larger than their riders is one of the most visually striking moments available anywhere in Asia.

The Ulaanbaatar Naadam is the largest and most elaborate version of the festival, featuring thousands of wrestlers and archers and hundreds of horse racing contestants, opened with a massive parade of soldiers, monks, wrestlers, and performers through the streets of the capital and inaugurated with ceremonial events in the National Stadium. But many experienced travelers to Mongolia argue that the most authentic and moving Naadam experiences are found not in the capital but at the smaller festival celebrations held in provincial centers and rural districts across the country, where the competition is more intimate, the crowds are made up entirely of Mongolians rather than tourists, and the connection between the modern celebration and its ancient origins is more immediately felt.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Mongolia has six UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a number that is surprising given the country's historical and natural significance, and that reflects both the relatively recent engagement of Mongolia with international conservation frameworks and the practical challenges of assessment and management in such a remote and vast country.

The Uvs Nuur Basin, shared between Mongolia and Russia, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. Uvs Nuur is a large shallow saltwater lake in the Great Lakes Depression of western Mongolia, surrounded by a variety of ecosystems ranging from desert to taiga that support an exceptional diversity of plant and animal species. The basin is one of the most important bird habitats in Central Asia, with colonies of pelicans, flamingos, and numerous species of raptor, and it is also home to populations of snow leopard, argali sheep, and wild camel. The inscription recognized the basin as an outstanding example of the ecological processes of steppe and semi-desert ecosystems and as a landscape of exceptional natural beauty.

The Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape, inscribed in 2004, encompasses the long historical association of the Orkhon Valley with nomadic pastoral cultures and empires, from the Xiongnu through the Turkic khaganates to the Mongol Empire. The inscribed area includes the ruins of Karakorum and Erdene Zuu Monastery, numerous ancient burial mounds and memorial monuments, and the pastoral landscape that has sustained nomadic cultures for more than two thousand years. The inscription recognized the Orkhon Valley as an outstanding example of a landscape that illustrates the evolution of nomadic pastoral civilizations and their relationship with settled urban cultures.

The Petroglyphic Complexes of the Mongolian Altai, inscribed in 2011, preserves three groups of rock art in the Mongolian Altai that together represent one of the most significant collections of prehistoric rock art in Asia. The petroglyphs, carved and painted on rock surfaces across a period of approximately 12,000 years from the Upper Paleolithic to the early twentieth century, document the full sweep of human activity in the Mongolian Altai, from the hunting of megafauna by Paleolithic hunters to the herding cultures of the Bronze and Iron Ages to the horse-riding warriors of the nomadic empires. The Tsagaan Salaa and Baga Oigor complexes in the Bayan-Ölgii Province and the Aral Tolgoi complex in the Khovd Province together contain tens of thousands of individual images that constitute an unparalleled visual record of human life in Central Asia across the full span of human prehistory and history.

The Great Burkhan Khaldun Mountain and its surrounding sacred landscape, inscribed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site in 2015, represents Mongolia's most sacred geographical location and its most profound connection to the founding of the Mongol Empire. Burkhan Khaldun Mountain in the Khentii range of northeastern Mongolia is believed to be the birthplace of Temujin, who would become Genghis Khan, and the place where he sought refuge, prayed before his campaigns of unification, and was ultimately buried after his death in 1227. The exact location of his tomb remains unknown, fulfilling his instruction that it remain forever secret, but the mountain and its surrounding forests, rivers, and sacred landscapes form an area of approximately 1,240,000 hectares that has been continuously revered by Mongolian people for more than eight centuries. The inscription recognized the site for its outstanding universal value as a living sacred landscape that stands at the center of events which shaped the history of Asia and Europe between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Ancient shamanic practices predating the arrival of Buddhism are still observed here, and the mountain remains a pilgrimage destination for Mongolians who regard it as the physical embodiment of the eternal sky that is the supreme deity of traditional Mongolian spirituality.

The Landscapes of Dauria, inscribed as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site in 2017, is a transnational property shared between Mongolia and the Russian Federation that protects one of the world's most significant and least disturbed steppe ecosystems. The property covers a total of 912,624 hectares, of which 633,601 hectares lie within Mongolia, encompassing landscapes that exemplify the functioning of the Daurian Steppe ecoregion in its most intact and complete form. The Daurian Steppe is distinguished by its cyclical climate dynamics, which drive extraordinary fluctuations in wildlife populations, including the great migrations of Mongolian gazelle that can involve herds of hundreds of thousands of animals moving across the open grasslands in one of the most spectacular wildlife events remaining anywhere on earth. The site provides critical habitat for numerous species of migratory birds, including white-naped cranes, Siberian cranes, and great bustards, all of which are globally threatened. The Landscapes of Dauria were recognized by UNESCO as an outstanding example of an intact temperate grassland ecosystem that demonstrates ecological processes, including cyclical climate fluctuations and their effects on biodiversity, that have been severely disrupted or lost in virtually all other temperate grassland regions of the world.

The Deer Stone Monuments and Related Bronze Age Sites, inscribed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site in 2023, represent the most recent addition to Mongolia's UNESCO portfolio and one of the most remarkable collections of prehistoric monumental art found anywhere in the world. Deer stones are carved standing stones, typically between one and four meters in height, that were created by the nomadic cultures of the Eurasian steppe during the Bronze Age, approximately between 1200 and 600 BCE. Mongolia contains more than eighty percent of the world's known deer stones, a concentration that reflects the extraordinary continuity and sophistication of the Bronze Age cultures that flourished on the Mongolian steppe more than three thousand years ago. The stones take their name from the stylized flying deer that are their most distinctive decorative element, depicted in a manner so consistent across thousands of kilometers of steppe that scholars recognize a pan-Eurasian artistic tradition of the highest order. The inscribed serial property encompasses numerous sites across central and northern Mongolia and includes associated burial monuments called khirigsuurs that together illuminate the social organization, ritual practices, and cosmological beliefs of the Bronze Age peoples who inhabited the steppe millennia before the emergence of the Mongol Empire.