Mongolia is the emptiest country on Earth — three million people in a land the size of Western Europe, most of them nomadic, none of them fenced in. You sleep in a ger on the steppe, drink salty milk tea with herders, ride camels into the Gobi’s singing dunes, and drive for hours without seeing a road, let alone a building.
Western Mongolia & Eagle Hunters » 11-Day Altai Nomadic Expedition is a 11-day private tour of Mongolia, run on your own dates with a private guide and driver. You sleep in traditional ger camps with beds and full board across the countryside, and a 4-star hotel in Ulaanbaatar, moving by private 4×4 with a steppe driver.
Prices are per person and drop as your group grows — from $2910 per person for two travellers down to $1900 for a group of seven. Every departure is private: you never share the vehicle or the guide.
11-day Mongolia itinerary
Met at Ulaanbaatar and driven into the coldest capital in the world. Sukhbaatar Square has an enormous seated Genghis Khan at one end of it — a man erased from official memory for seventy Soviet years and now on the banknotes, the airport and the vodka. Half the country lives in this city; the other half live in a landmass three times the size of France, and there are more horses than people.
Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
Gandan Monastery, the one Stalin's purge left standing, with its 26-metre gilded Buddha. The National Museum for the deer stones and the Mongol empire rooms. Then the Winter Palace of the Bogd Khan, the last theocratic ruler, preserved exactly as he left it — including a ger made from the skins of 150 snow leopards, which is horrifying and historically extraordinary at the same time. Zaisan Hill at sunset for the view over the whole valley.
Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
Fly west to Ölgii, in Bayan-Ölgii — the only Kazakh-majority province of Mongolia, where the signs are in Kazakh, the mosques are working, and the Altai mountains fill the western horizon. This is as far from Ulaanbaatar as you can get and still be in the country.
Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
Berkutchi — hunting with a golden eagle from horseback — is at least a thousand years old and probably far older, and Bayan-Ölgii is where it survives. A hunter takes a female eaglet from a cliff nest, spends years training her, hunts fox and wolf with her through the winter, and after some years releases her back to the wild to breed. You meet a family that does this, and you stay in their ger.
Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
The demonstration is the real thing: the hunter rides out onto the ridge with the eagle hooded on his arm, unhoods her, and she drops off his fist and comes in at speed to a lure across open ground. She weighs six kilos and her grip could break your forearm. The afternoon is on horseback, and the evening is spent learning to cook in a ger, which mostly means mutton.
Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
Into Tsengel Khairkhan, which is snow leopard territory — you will not see one, almost nobody ever does, but the argali (the largest wild sheep in the world) and the ibex are up on the crags, and the guides will find them.
Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
The Potanin is the longest glacier in the Mongolian Altai — fourteen kilometres of ice coming off Tavan Bogd. The gear goes in on yaks because there is no other way, and you camp at the snout of it, which is a very cold and very quiet place to sleep.
Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
Tavan Bogd means 'five saints' — the five peaks at the junction of Mongolia, Russia and China, the highest of which, Khüiten, is the highest point in the country at 4,374 metres. The valleys below carry petroglyphs cut over three thousand years, a UNESCO site, showing hunters, chariots and animals that no longer live here.
Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
Two freshwater lakes joined by a channel, at 2,000 metres, with the Altai behind them — Tuvan herders on one side, Kazakh on the other, both moving stock through in summer. You can kayak, and the water is glacial and clear and extremely cold.
Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
The flight back east across the whole width of the country — three hours over ground with essentially nothing on it, which is the best possible summary of Mongolia — and a farewell dinner in the capital.
Overnight: ger camp / hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
A transfer to Ulaanbaatar airport for your flight. End of our services.
