every hour | 12 nights | from $4,720 per person
Mongolia Vacation Package: 12 Nights, Every Hour Placed
This Mongolia vacation package is 12 nights in a convoy with a cook, a guide and two drivers. Somebody else holds the clock for most of every day, and the steppe offers no way to step off it.
What every hour means here
- Hours already spoken for
- About 11 hours of an average day are already placed: driving, meals cooked at set times, and the walking or riding the guide has laid out. On the two long transfer days it reaches 13.
- The earliest you must be somewhere
- 5:40 am, on three mornings, so the convoy is moving before the wind gets up. The other nine starts fall between 7:30 and 8:30.
- The longest stretch that is yours
- Five hours on the afternoon of day seven at the river camp, once the vehicles are parked and before dinner at 7. Nothing else in the 12 days comes near it.
- Who chooses where you eat
- The timetable does, and the guide reads it out at breakfast. The crew cooks at the vehicles, so on 10 of the 12 days there is no restaurant to choose and no second route to take.
- What happens if you skip a day
- You can sit out a walk, but the convoy still moves that morning, so in practice you move with it and read in the vehicle. No money comes back: vehicles, crew, fuel and camp fees are paid whether you get out or not.
- Who this shape of day does not suit
- Anyone who wants to decide at breakfast what the day looks like, or who needs a bathroom within reach at all times. Also poor sleepers: canvas walls, generators off at 10 pm, and a 5:40 start three times.
The last row costs this company bookings and stays on the page anyway. A shape of day that does not suit you is far cheaper to find out about here than on the third morning.
Where the eleven hours go
- Twelve nights of beds: seven in canvas gers the crew pitches and strikes, three in fixed camps with cold running water, two in a town guesthouse with a shared bathroom along the corridor.
- Two vehicles, two drivers and a maximum of eight travelers, plus a cook who rides with the food and 220 liters of fuel and water on the second roof rack.
- Three cooked meals a day at the vehicles, hot lunch included, because on some stretches there is nothing to buy for 180 km.
- About 1,900 km of driving across the 12 days, most of it gravel and wheel track. The longest day is nine hours in the seat with four stops.
- Every park fee, camp fee and dune permit on the route, paid before you arrive.
- One guide for all 12 days who also interprets, and an airport pickup at whatever hour you land.
What the convoy does not carry
- Getting to Mongolia. Round trip air from the US runs roughly $1,150 to $1,800 depending on the month and your coast, and it is priced on its own.
- Anything to drink past tea and boiled water. Beer and vodka exist in the towns, at about $2 a bottle.
- Laundry. There is one chance at it, on night nine, around $6 a load.
- Tips for the driver, cook and guide, which run $8 to $12 per traveler per day by local custom.
- Medical or evacuation cover. You arrange that yourself. This agency does not sell it, advise on it or hold your policy.
- A ger to yourself. Single occupancy adds $560 and the crew pitches a second tent.
What it costs
from $4,720 per person
- Covering
- 12 nights, a driven convoy with the day already placed.
- Assuming
- Two people to a room, unless the six rows above say otherwise for your case.
- Pushed up by
- The month, the grade of room, how late you leave it, and how many of the hours you want somebody else to hold.
- Fixed when
- An operator puts it in writing with its own name on it. Until then it marks the bottom of a range that genuinely happened.
You settle with the operator, through whatever system they run. This site gathers nothing and no card ever arrives at this company.
The months that hold, and the ones that do not
Mid-June to the second week of September is the whole season. Inside that window the steppe runs 68 to 82 F by day and the tracks are firm enough for nine hour drives. May and late September still work for the driving, but nights fall below freezing under canvas and the cook is boiling water for the wash bowl at 6 am because the hose is solid. October through April the route does not run: the passes hold snow and the fixed camps are shut.
The two weeks around the national games in July are the ones we would talk you out of. Ground costs rise about 30 percent, the camps near our line are full, and the same drive takes two hours longer because half the country is on the road as well.
Late August has a smaller, different problem. Rain on the northern leg turns two river crossings into a four hour wait for the water to drop, and that happens perhaps one trip in five. If your dates are rigid and a missed flight home would cost you money, take the first half of August instead.
Decisions left until confirmation
Four things are settled the week we confirm and not before. First, which of the two southern arms you drive: the dune leg adds 260 km and one more night under canvas, the shorter arm buys you an afternoon at the river. Second, whether night nine is the guesthouse bed or a fourth camp, which decides your one hot shower. Third, how the gers are shared, which matters most when there are three of you. Fourth, food: standard board is mutton, noodles and potato on most days, so a vegetarian or a celiac traveler needs supplies carried out of the capital and the cook has to know 10 days ahead.