Where to stay in Mongolia
Are you planning to travel to Mongolia? And looking for information about accommodation in Mongolia? So, I will share my first experience of accommodating in Mongolia while my tour. So where to stay in Mongolia when you travel around?
The first day, I and my friends landed in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, and met my guide and driver at the airport. Then we transfer to the 4star hotel where I stayed for 2 nights and its service was good enough for me, clean rooms, good breakfasts, and polite staffs.
The next days, we had traveled around Mongolia for 20 days and our first destination was Kharakhorin, where we made the historical and cultural tour. After a full day of exploration, we arrived at the Ger/ yurt/ camp, which was so strange for me. There were several traditional yurts, have brightly colored furniture and a wood-burning stove in the center.
Each ger has two, three, four beds with clean sheets and warm blankets and some ger camps offer double-bedded ger. If it is colder they provide wood and make a fire in your ger which is excellent service. All camps have a modern toilet and hot shower rooms but some camps especially camps in the Gobi had limited electricity so sometimes it was bit difficult to have a warm shower and water supplying system was poor. They use diesel- generator for electricity which makes a harsh noise, so note that if your ger is close to the generator you can not sleep well.
Also, they serve Mongolian or European style meals and vegetarian food are available at the camps. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the large ger-restaurant or in the wooden house; All camp restaurant has some good beers and other alcoholic beverages. Some camps offer self-serving buffet meals, generally, they don’t have a menu to choose meals. Depending on our tour program some days they provide lunch with boxes for us and we had a picnic lunch in nature.
The gers are a really enjoyable and authentic form of accommodation; when you sleep in the ger you can see millions of stars through the roof-window and round dwelling seems to be a bit strange. Mongolian ger is easy to break down and easy to erect and warm in winter, cool in summer. It is hard to believe that Mongolians live in the ger in harsh cold winters but they have been moving with their gers and living like this way for thousands of years. It has developed and changed very little for centuries.
During high tourist season, some ger camps are full and it is hard to book by yourself, so the best way is to book through a local tour operator and they would have the most up-to-date information on new camps and non-existent ones.
After driving on bad roads and the camps are one of the highlights of the trip. Evenings in ger camps are the perfect opportunity to enjoy the superb natural scenery and relax in the peaceful wilderness. You can put your bottled waters in their fridge for the next warm summer day. And few camps offer traditional folklore performance; beautiful girls and boys in colorful national costume were singing and playing with horse head fiddles; whole performance was fantastic.
In Mongolia, you can also make a wild camping trip. We stayed in tents for 2 nights. Mongolian nature and landscape are unbelievably beautiful and you can set your tent everywhere you want, except the strictly protected areas. Your local tour company provides all camping gears, toiletries portable shower, and kitchen during the trip. One of the highlights of the trip was staying in a local family’s ger. They were the most hospitable and friendly people I have ever met. It was a great opportunity to explore their culture firsthand. Finally, our Mongolian trip was fantastic except the local roads. Mongolia is one of the must-see places once in a lifetime and will steal your heart.
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