12-day Treasures of Mongolia tour

Met at Ulaanbaatar, the coldest capital city on Earth — winter here hits −40°C — and home to nearly half of Mongolia's population. The other half live in a country three times the size of France with almost no fences in it. Mongolia has the lowest population density of any sovereign state, and you are about to find out what that actually feels like.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

South to Baga Gazriin Chuluu, a granite massif rising out of flat steppe, with a ruined monastery in the rocks, a spring the locals say heals the eyes, and rock formations that look deliberately stacked. Ger camp.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

On to Tsagaan Suvarga, the 'white stupa' — a 60-metre escarpment of sedimentary rock striped white, pink and orange, which was the shore of an ancient sea and now stands over an empty plain. Nobody is there.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

Fly south into the Gobi and straight out to Yolyn Am, a narrow gorge where the sun barely reaches the floor and an ice field survives into July — ice in a desert. Bearded vultures nest on the walls above; the valley is named for them.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

Khongoryn Els runs 180 kilometres and rises 300 metres — these are the sand dunes people picture when they picture the Gobi, and they hum. When the sand slides, it produces a deep resonant note you can hear a long way off. You climb one at sunset, which is much harder than it looks, and come down in about ninety seconds. Camels in the morning.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

Across the Gobi to the Flaming Cliffs, where the first dinosaur eggs ever identified were found in 1922, along with Velociraptor. The sandstone burns orange at sunset — hence the name — and the ground is still, occasionally, giving up bone.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

Ongi was two monasteries facing each other across a river, and around a thousand monks lived here until 1939, when they were destroyed in the purge and the monks were shot or conscripted. The ruins are still ruins — deliberately — and a small temple has been rebuilt beside them. It is the clearest picture in the country of what the 1930s did to Mongolian Buddhism.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

Into the Orkhon Valley, which is UNESCO-listed not for its scenery but for what it means: this valley has been the seat of steppe power for two thousand years — Xiongnu, Turks, Uighurs, and finally the Mongols all ran their empires from here. The Orkhon waterfall drops 20 metres into a basalt gorge. Herders still move their gers through this valley on the same cycle they always have.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

Out of the Orkhon and into the Khangai to Tsenkher, where 85°C water comes out of the ground and is piped into open-air pools in a larch forest. It is, for most people, the best night of the trip.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

On to Kharkhorin, the site of Karakorum — the capital Genghis chose and Ögedei built, from which an empire running Korea to Hungary was administered, and of which essentially nothing remains: the stones were taken in 1586 to build Erdene Zuu, the first Buddhist monastery in the country, and its wall of 108 stupas is what you see today.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

The long road east back to the capital, across the steppe that has been the whole point of the last ten days.

Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

A transfer to Ulaanbaatar airport for your flight. End of our services.