Do you speak Mongolian? If not, independent travel will be difficult. There is little to no infrastructure, so you can't just hop a bus to the Gobi desert of to other sites. Generally speaking a group of travelers hire a driver/guide and set out for some point. Price is generally about 50 USD per night for food, lodging and transport. Most drivers have family someplace that they can arrange for you to visit.
There are a number of possible destinations outside UB. These are probably the most common places to travel:
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the lake Hovsgul area (This high mountain lake (1,645 m/5400ft above sea level) is surrounded by mountains, meadows and forest, a complete contrast to the rest of Mongolia. It's full of fish and the area is home to sheep, ibex, bear and moose, as well as over 200 species of birds. This is the deepest lake in Central Asia, and the world's 14th largest source of fresh water. You can hike along the shore, take a dip in the icy waters or try your hand at fishing. An amazing 90 rivers flow into the lake, but only a single river flows out - the Egiin Gol, which ultimately reaches Lake Baikal in Siberia. You can visit the Reindeer people who live in the area...) or
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the Gobi Desert (Second largest desert of the world. Covering the southeastern third of Mongolia, the Gobi Desert stretches about 3,000 mi/4,830 km along both sides of the Chinese border. It isn’t a Saharan-type desert - although there are sand dunes, the Gobi Desert is not a barren wasteland. It has herds of Bactrian camels (with two humps), wild horses and donkeys, as well as leopards, mountain sheep and ibexes. There is a lot of variety within the Gobi Desert, from wildlife parks and mountains to canyons with dramatic rockfaces. Once the site of an ancient inland sea, the area has dried up and then eroded over the eons, providing paleontologists with magnificent specimens of dinosaur fossils...)
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Karakorum (In 1220 Genghis Khan decided to build the capital city of his vast Mongolian empire at Karakorum. Building was completed by his son, Ogedai Khan, after Genghis' death, but Karakorum served as the capital for 40 years before Kublai Khan moved it to what is now Beijing. Following the move, and the subsequent collapse of the Mongolian empire, Karakorum was abandoned. Whatever was left was used to help build the glorious Erdene Zuu monastery in the 16th century. Erdenezuu (The Hundred Treasures) was the first center of Lamaism in Mongolia...) - this is often combined with the Gobi desert tour.
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Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, created in 1993, borders the Khan Khentii Strictly Protected Area, and it is one of the most visited protected areas. Terelj, on the Terelj river bank is a spectacular valley with eroded rock formations, pine-covered mountains and grasslands carpeted with perennial wildflowers and edelweiss. - this is considered by some to be very tame and touristy.
These descriptions are from the visitmongolia.com website, but this is not a recommendation to use them.
OTAM = open tour around mongolia. You can buy ticket for 123 USD and travel on a circuit to all the destinations. The length of the road is 2000 km. It takes 5 nights and 6 days to do the entire route of the trip nonstop. The interesting part of it is you can get off and on anywhere you want and stay there as long as you want. The ticket is valued until you finish the circuit. Check out their website: www.otamecotours.com. It seems like an interesting concept, which might be exactly what you want.
Another community group is GertoGer.org - Nomad Centered Community Tourism Project
Office Tel/Fax: (976-11) 313336
Email: [info@GertoGer.org]
Website: http://www.GertoGer.org
If you use either of these, I would love to hear back and it would probably be useful to add something to the guidebook updates section as both of these seem to be relatively new operations.
Ruth
