GREAT tour guide! Recommendation for low-budget travelers

Isnt it funny how you dont tell us a single thing about the bad experience but joined specifically to post this amazing tale of a great guide!!

Yeah, I know. I normally don't write about things, but I think this guide was really amazing and worth writing about for other people. Also because I met so many others who had bad guides who put them in tourist ger camps after promising them they wouldn't or guides who just failed to tell things about the attractions (like we almost missed the dino bones at the bottom of the flaming cliffs in the Gobi!). Those things are just frustrating, especially since you pay it all and probably go into the Gobi once in your life, like it was for me. I'm not easily impressed, but for this guide I don't mind making an effort and write about him :)

Trouble is, there are so many touting business here, any first time poster who just joins then writes like you did will get very quickly shot down in flames.

Yes, I noticed :P I'm also quite hesitant to just follow whatever is on the internet. But in the end, people just have to decide for themselves of course, I'm just putting it out there so that people might or might not choose to go with this guide and because of my good experience and the load of shitty tours and guides that is being offered in Mongolia I reckoned it's at least worth it to put it online.

OP - Perhaps now that you have joined and are contributing, you will continue to participate and then your post won't seem like a one night wonder.

Ruth

Thanks for this great tip, dikkertje_dap! Going to Mongolia this time next year and will definitely keep the name of your tour guide in mind! And if you have some other good ideas, let me know!

Thanks!
Babs

Well, depends on what you want to see in Mongolia and how much time you have. This guide basically does trips all over Mongolia and if you have a route of your own you would like to do, he can fit it all in, I'm sure. Of course you can always do a short tour first, see how you like it and then book a longer tour with him. That's best to do anyway: some people I met spent two weeks on a tour they didn't like at all, but once you've booked you're stuck on the tour. If you're going into the Gobi desert, you at least need 5 or 6 days though, because the distances are huge and if you want to travel around you need to allow some time for that. A lot of people just go for 3 days to Mongolia and don't get very far. So depending on how much time you have, you can make a plan to explore Mongolia and tell this to Gan Bataar. He can make a tailored trip out of it then as he knows drivers and guides throughout the whole country. For me it made such a difference meeting him: like having the feeling to actually know someone in Mongolia I could always fall back on for anything, even after the tour was over. We sometimes needed a driver and asked him what the price was and he would always tell us what we heard from locals as well, he's a really honest guy.
Well, as you can tell I am really enthusiastic about him (I did the tour with 4 others who all agree by the way!), so yes, keep his e-mail and number because you might want to contact him. He speaks quite good English and his wife does as well. If you have any other questions, just let me know :)