Mongolia Travel Forum

hi guys!
i wonder if it is possible to travel intepented in mongolia, so without or with limited use of tour companies or guides?
do you think it can be done in budget prices?
we would be fine, too , if there are budget tours.
perhaps language is a limitation, could we communicate in english with locals?
many thanks-happy travels!
nikos

- Yes.
- You can go all the way by train relatively inexpensive
- Otherwise, Air Mongol flies between Berlin and Ulanbatar

For train prices probably the Bulgaria-Russia CITY-STAR is the best for you till Naushki.
A CITY-STAR ticket should also qualify you for Russian transit visa without invitation

http://bdz.creato.biz/en/rila_citystar

Not sure the prices (in Leva, 2 Lev = 1 Euro) are correct tough:
http://bdz.creato.biz/en/cs_bgrus

Such CITY-STAR tickets are also sold in Serbia and Slovakia. Slovak rail has the most experience, Serbian the least.

Keep in mind, for two people the price of 522.21 Lev = ca. 265 Euro is a round-trip from Greek-Bulgarian to Russian-Mongolian border, so it's ca. 66 Euro/person/direction

GTraveling in Mongolia isn't easy. Of the 2 million people that live there, many live in Ulan Baator so the few others are scattered between tiny towns and gers many many miles apart in the mongolian landscape. If you want to go by yourself, you need to buy a horse and camping stuff and a good compass (i've heard one person who did this for a couple fo weeks with some friends in summer). I, personally, was very happy with the 2 tours i did there (budget arranged via the hostel i was staying in). I'm not a fan of orgainsed tours but both me and a very well-traveled friend of mine (who has been to places many of us only dream about) were glad we had a driver who new the way. The one crazy guy i met in UB who went of alone came back after a week. He hadn't gotten very far and had eventually given up.

The hostel where i stayed arranged made the tours just as we wanted them. So it was very nice to be able to do what we wanted (even though of course not everything went as planned ;-) ). And all for a very very reasonable price (being a budget traveler myself, budget means budget).

Same experience as Mique. We did it in 1982. It was very easy to "get in" but once "there" it was much better to go via organized mini-tour. It was not a typical organized tour: no time pressure, no "obligatory things to see of communist revolutionary past" as you would expect back in 1982. We had "Socialist" citizenship, they even did not bother to separate tourists from "Socialist" and "capitalist" countries (also rather untypical for 1982). Everyone flew from Ulan-Bator individually to the desired destination and we were driven in small busses. Because of the nature of the country/destination the who did travel at all was kind of "pre-determined" it was an easy job to bear with each other for both guides and the group. The price we did pay in 1982 was very reasonable even by budget of what a citizen of a Socialist country could afford.

On the other side who tried to do on it's own had difficulties due lack of infrastructure, not due of some bureaucratic hurdles.

If what I did could be called "independent" travel then I guess it is possible--I booked my own flights into UB, stayed in a hostel there for two nights, and hired a van with a driver, a guide, and a cook (!) to take us around the country for 2.5 weeks, with a custom itinerary that we directed. This was a lot cheaper than it sounds--although the accommodations were very, very rustic and the food very basic.

As the other posters above have noted, the country is very sparsely populated and there are almost no roads of any kind. You drive on dirt tracks on a good day, and some days you just drive across the grass or the rocky desert. Getting a good driver is absolutely essential--ours was really a magician, and he really made the whole trip (sadly, our guide was pretty worthless). I would not presume to do any traveling around Mongolia without an experienced local driver. You'll get hopelessly lost almost immediately.

Language will be a major difficulty in the countryside if you do not speak Mongolian, as almost no one outside UB speaks English. I speak Russian, so I could read things and pronounce them, but that doesn't do much for you since there aren't many signs to read anyway! Almost no one in Mongolia spoke Russian, either, contrary to what I had been led to believe (or maybe they just didn't want to speak it.)

Incidentally I had the best Korean meal of my entire life in UB.

many thanks to all, you were very informative!
if you can mention with who you made the arrangements you had there so i can conduct them (eg hostels, tour agents etc) it would be really valuable for me
i wish i hear from you!
n.

For the train tickets I made and same about you. You should go to Bulgaria and just buy these CITY-STAR-s.
For tour, it was Dhulchin (not sure how to spell it in English) - that was the ONLY state company back in 1982. The entire set-up was pretty funny because there was NOTHING mentioned, where they are and how to get a tour and how to reserve the train ticket back - we had "open" tickets.

So we went to Hungarian consulate (my wife already was Hungarian) and asked them. They told us, "Comrade Tömör" will help us. Now, the word "Tömör" means "dense" in Hungarian, a valid Hungarian family name. to our surprise, "Comrade Tömör" was a Mongolian guy because "Tömör" is not "dense" but "iron" in Mongolian, also a valid family name. (Well, both Ural-Altaian languages and obviously "iron" is "dense" mostly... isn't it? Besides, "demir" in Turkish, "timur" in Ozbek language... all "iron")

Anyway, Comrade Tömör explained to us the somewhat ritual way of giving little gifts to different people in charge and if not, just how to act polite... and it worked like a charm. We were surprised, the entire set-up wasn't really much with profit in mind, it was a lot like mutual back-scratching.

That was in 1982, much has changed but maybe the "back-scratching" did not. It is familiar for us from Hungary, nothing works there without back-scratching either.

I was in Mongolia in 2005 so my info might be a little more current than Gyuri's :-)

We booked everything in-country through Idre's Guesthouse (this is easy to find using Google, and actually I found them via VT member tsetsegee). The owner set up our van, driver, guide, and cook. He also picked us up at the aiport when we arrived and dropped us off when we left. We stayed in the guesthouse for two nights at the beginning of the trip and another night at the end.

The key thing is to have a great driver--ours was fantastic, and his name was Nyama. If you can get this guy, you will be in really good shape. Unfortunately, we had a very poor guide/translator, which caused problems--so if Idre sets you up with a girl name Jagii (or Jackie), ask for someone else!

The guest house in UB was not great, but for five dollars a day, it's hard to ask for luxury. I hope Idre has made some improvements in the last two years.

I am just now uploading my Mongolia photos to the web (not VT, it's too slow) so if you check back in a few hours I can give you the URL.

It's so different now. In 1983 we passed Mongolia on our way to China. It was an anti-Chinese ethnic terror, people of Chinese ethnic background were driven into our car and simply expelled to China. Since I had CCCP citizenship and my g/f Hungarian, the Mongol custom officials did "behave" to an acceptable degree. We also took some possessions of refugees in our compartment. There was also the daughter of Mexican Ambassador in Beijing with full-blown diplomatic passport, so we all were a bit busy between UB and Zamyn Üd (border). After Yumdjageen Tsedenbal resigned the atrocities ended. Was pretty spooky, we had "SV" (de-luxe) car and out of sudden in UB it was full of refugees, sometimes large families in a single compartment, completely against all safety regulations and treaties. After the Chinese border the refugees were taken care off.

What a difference a few decades makes. The Mongolians are still no fans of the Chinese, though. Koreans are much more welcome.

My Mongolia photos are available at http://picasaweb.google.com/travelmad478. Warning: there are a lot of them! (And this is the heavily edited version!)

you can book with www.mongoliatours.org

real cheap, honnest and good drivers

you are more than really great!!!!!!
thanks again
i'll send another question soon, if you could be so kind to spare some time for that, too!
happy travels

no problem with this, I wait for all questions as well

jst be away from 31/1/18/2
have nice day