Our Mongolia horse trek began with ten emptied ATMs and an 8-hour road trip. By dusk we’d swapped a city hostel for gers on the Mongolian steppe where Genghis Khan’s riders once thundered past. Five days of adventure (three in the saddle), countless bowls of milk tea, and one surprise Naadam later, we’d crossed the Orkhon Valley on horseback and fallen hard for life in the gers.
We booked our horse trek in advance with a local Mongolian tour company that we found on Google. We communicated via WhatsApp with the representative Zaya of the tour company and agreed on a time, place and price for the trek.
On the morning of the first day our driver and Zaya met us at our hostel at 8 am sharp. We had a long drive ahead of us. Zaya had specifically asked us to bring the full fee for the tour in cash, so we had spent more than an hour walking from ATM to ATM the night before to get the amount of cash we needed. I think we emptied 10 ATMs that night.
We handed Zaya the 4.608.000 tögrög (≈ $1,280) for our 5-day/4-night adventure and climbed into the Toyota seven-seater with our driver and his nine-year-old son. Zaya poured some milk on the tires of the car for good luck. We had 8 hours of driving in front of us to get to Orkhon valley.
It took us an hour before we had left the city of Ulaanbaatar and the plains of Mongolia opened up. Four hours in, we pulled into one of the first roadside restaurants since leaving the city. Our driver pointed at the Mongolian-only menu and I quickly translated a message saying ”I’ll have what you’re having”. From the photos, Sara chose the mutton noodle soup. It was a simple and filling meal. Outside, the restaurant speakers were playing a Roxette cover and suddenly home didn’t feel so far away.
The roadtrip continued and we stopped to top up on gas before waving goodbye to asphalt roads, and hello to dirt. It was a new experience for us to travel on dirt roads. Tracks kept splitting, sometimes veering off entirely, sometimes running in parallel, leaving our driver to pick a lane on the fly. Potholes, large rocks, and the occasional horse, goat, or yak kept us on our toes.
After 2.5 hours on dirt roads (8 hours in total from Ulaanbaatar, excluding stops) we arrived to our destination for the night: We were in Orkhon valley! The gateway village had a few permanent building and many gers (Mongolian yurts). We were welcomed with a cup of Mongolian milk tea, had a walk over to the Orkhon waterfall and returned for dinner with our host family.
We stayed in the guest ger, and despite having four beds to choose from, we opted to share the biggest one. We brought our own sleeping bags per instructions from Zaya, as there were no bed linen at any of our stays. In the morning we woke to a filling breakfast of yak-meat soup, bread with butter, and a cup of milk tea. After breakfast we packed up: today was our first day on horseback!
With our bags packed, we waited for instructions. After a knock at the door, the father of our host family poked his head into the ger and announced, “Dad is here!”
Our guide turned out to be Char, essentially the family’s grandfather. He already had two horses saddled and waiting. Since no one in the family spoke much English, we relied on hand gestures and learned our first command: “Choo!” means “go.” “Choo, choo!”, and we were off.
It was raining for the first two hours or so, and after three hours of riding we stopped for lunch. Char had prepared lunch boxes: tomato pasta with yak meat. After finishing his box, Char stretched out in the grass, and fell asleep.
We left the open plains for the forest, rode another hour, and paused at a ger for tea. From there we still had about 2.5 hours to go before reaching our stop for the night.
Since leaving Ulaanbaatar, the only person we had met who spoke more than a few words of English was our driver’s nine-year-old son. Char’s English stretched to a few essentials: “toilet,” “stop,” “hungry”, and the rest we solved with gestures.
That night our host served a hearty yak stew with rice and peas, the kind that sends you straight to bed. The next morning we woke up to freshly made flat bread and the inevitable cup of milk tea, it was delicious.
We mounted up for a few more hours in the saddle, exploring some of the nearby lakes. At one shore we took a break, opened a bag of gifflar (Swedish cinnamon buns) which Char tried and promptly approved.
Most toilets out here were three-walled pit latrines with no roof, you squat over a hole in the ground. My stomach refused to cooperate there, but after the cinnamon-bun break we left Char by the water and hiked up the nearby hill for the view. Halfway up, nature called and I answered… in the woods.
We rode back to the previous night’s host, had lunch, and took a quick nap before the final stretch. A bit saddle-sore after two days, we tried to ask Char how long was left until the next place. He showed us ”3” and ”0” with his fingers. Great! Only 30 more minutes of riding, right? Well… it turned out it was closer to 2,5 hours.
Luckily, before we arrived Char had called the new host on beforehand and asked them to prepare the dinner for our arrival. Freshly steamed buuz, dumplings with yak meat, served with pickles.
In the neighboring gers, a few tourists had an English-speaking guide. He kindly translated while we asked Char about tomorrow’s plan. ”Naadam”, Char said. We’d assumed that arriving in Mongolia in late July meant we’d missed the Naadam festival, but it seems that Naadam is celebrated on different dates around the country.
With sore bodies, we set off on our final day of riding. Today, we were going to experience Naadam! After a couple of hours in the saddle, we could see white tents in the distance. As soon as we arrived, a family Char knew waved us over for milk tea and sandwiches.
Naadam was a full spectacle! We saw horse racing, wrestling, people gambling and tried what we believe might have been airag, fermented horse milk. We sampled cheese, drank plenty of milk tea, and were invited to try Mongolian snuff, a perfumed powdered tobacco passed around in small bottles and sniffed as a polite greeting.
Naadam was an incredible experience, and a big bonus for us since we didn’t know that we’d get to experience it for this trip! After an extra hour in the saddle to reach our first-night camp (where our driver and his son had been waiting since day one), we celebrated with ice cream from the village’s lone minimarket.
The next morning we had rice porridge for breakfast, made with yak milk. It tasted almost like at home, but served with butter instead of cinnamon and sugar. Accompanied by a cup of milk tea of course. Then we buckled in for the eight-hour return to Ulaanbaatar, happily exhausted. What a great adventure!
If you’re interested in going horse trekking in Mongolia please check out our guide: How to go horse trekking in Mongolia – Full guide!
