Challenging
Activity
Transfers
8 Nights
1 - 1
Group size
Leaders
This itinerary has options for you to extend & customise your experience before &/or after your holiday. See Itinerary for details.
In this Mongolian bespoke winter horse riding holiday, you get the chance to ride horses through the sublime snowy Naiman Nuur mountainous region of Central Mongolia, and stay with local nomadic families along the way in their felt gers to experience their pastoral way of life, delicious natural foods and culture. As you are visiting in winter, the riding days will be shorter as it will not be possible to travel as far in the snow, but you will still have plenty of time in the saddle exploring.
The trip also includes two days where it is possible to ice climb at the frozen Orkhon Waterfall with a professional guide and equipment. You will also visit beautifully preserved 16th Century Buddhist Monasteries and ride Bactrian camels across the sands of the Gobi Desert as a final special experience before returning to the capital.
Mongolian horses tend to be small, but have tremendous stamina and speed, and are well adapted to the harsh environment of the steppe where they have thrived for centuries. They are well used to being ridden as the nomads use them throughout the year as a means of transport and for herding their livestock. Riding freely through the endless horizons of this historical land is an awe-inspiring feeling of freedom, and a complete return to the natural way of life so sorely missing from many modern societies.
We will learn about the history of the areas we travel through; visiting the site where Genghis Khan founded the famed cosmopolitan capital city of the Mongolian Empire in the 12th Century, and riding through the Orkhon Valley where he finally defeated the army of Tayang Khan, leader of the western Naiman tribe, to unite the nine Mongol tribes before conquering Central Asia as far as the Danube in Hungary. We will also pass many ancient nomadic burial sites and one of the mysterious ‘Deer Stones’ scattered across Siberia and Mongolia, dating from the peoples of the Bronze Age.
Single rooms are available on a first come, first served basis, however, due to the nature of some of the accommodation we are using on this adventure (staying in yurts), there are 2 nights where single rooms are not possible, so the supplement price reflects this. We will charge on a pro-rata basis if a single room is not available to book for part of the trip where it would have been possible.
This itinerary has options for you to extend & customise your experience before &/or after your holiday. See below for details.
Transfer
Pick up from Ulaanbaatar Aiport and transfer to the Novotel Hotel on the 18th of December for flight arriving at 15:25
Transfer
Lunch
We collect you from your hotel and drive you to the Genghis Khan memorial statue, then take you back to your hotel in Ulaanbaatar. Lunch is included.
Transfer
Lunch
Dinner
Ger
In the 13th Century, Genghis Khan began the largest empire the world has ever seen; stretching from the Sea of Japan to the Danube in Hungary. He founded the cosmopolitan city of Kharkhorin (also known as Karakorum) as his capital, although it was later moved to Peking by his grandson, Kubilai Khan.
This morning please aim for an early departure for the drive to the site of Kharkhorin (approx 5.5 hours). You will nip to the supermarket for snacks for the trip and stop en route for lunch and to breathe in the snowy winter landscapes which will markedly define this journey from a 'usual' car trip!
Once in the town, you will visit the museum to get an idea of the scale of Kharkorin, then explore the stunning temples of the 16th Century Erdene Zuu Buddhist Monastery, surrounded by monumental walls and 108 white stupas. It is probably the earliest surviving Buddhist monastery in the country, having withstood (though been significantly damaged by) the purge of monasteries in 1939 by Communist leaders. Since the 1990s the monastery has become, once again, a place of Buddhist worship.
Spend time with local families today, enjoying the Mongolian hospitality, but retire to our ‘ger’ for the night.
Transfer
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Ger
Your route now goes off-road (up to 3.5 hours) onto dirt tracks alongside the beautiful Orkhon River - until you arrive at the site of the now frozen waterfall.
You can ice-climb the waterfall with your guide and spend time exploring the wintry surroundings and the nomadic Mongolian camps that have settled here for the winter season. Climbing equipment can be provided and we will discuss this aspect in detail before your departure.
You will sleep tonight in a ger provided by a host family and can watch how they prepare your meal in the traditional ways.
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Ger
The Ulaan Tsutgalan (Red Convergence) River meets the Orkhon River in one of the biggest waterfalls in Mongolia, now frozen in the winter months.
After a well-deserved rest in the morning you can ice-climb some more today, as well as have the chance of exploring the region further.
You will stay for one more night here in your local family ger.
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Ger
Once ready, you begin your journey into the beautiful Naiman Nuur mountains today, known for their series of stunning lakes. You will trek along the Orkhon valley before heading up into the mountain scenery, past numerous ger camps and livestock.
Tonight you will stay again in a ger camp. You can watch and even can help to bring in the herds of yaks and goats before nightfall. Without any light pollution, you will see the stars come out in all their brilliance in this remote region.
Khuisiin Naiman Nuur means ‘eight lakes of the navel’ and you will get the chance to see several of these on our route today. The Naiman Nuur area was created by volcanic eruptions almost 8000 years ago, creating a striking and starkly beautiful landscape dotted with now extinct volcanoes.
Sleep tonight in a different ger with your horseman's family.
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Ger
Enjoy more winter riding through the snow in this beautiful region, learning about how the nomads adapt to the harsh winter climate.
Camp tonight is particularly special as it is our last night in the ‘proper wilderness’ and milk vodka and a celebratory feast are likely.
Transfer
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Ger
Today you will drive to the desert ger camp at the Elsen Tasarkhai Sand Dunes, situated on the edge of the Gobi Desert. You will enjoy a short ride on enormous woolly Bactrian camels (two humps) across the sand dunes covered in snow in this beautiful, windswept spot, surrounded by mountains receding into the distance and the fearsome desert stretching for waterless mile upon mile to the south.
The camp tonight enjoys more facilities and is more commonly visited during the summer season than the previous nomadic camps in the wilderness.
Transfer
Breakfast
Lunch
On your last full day, return to the capital of Ulaanbaatar, passing through nomadic ‘towns’ off road, and stopping off to see some sacred rocks and yak statues.
We drop you at a hotel of your choice where you can rest up before your journey home, full of snowy memories!
Carbon Compensation is not the perfect solution, and it is important to first reduce our carbon emissions as much as we can, yet trees remain an excellent natural technology to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to slow global warming.
For every client and guide who attends a YellowWood Adventure, we donate £30 to our partner charity WeForest to plant 15 trees to (over) compensate for the carbon footprint of the tour.
We also invite our clients to match this with an optional additional £30 for another 15 trees to be planted to help compensate for the carbon footprint of their international flights.
WeForest run many tree planting and tree maintenance projects such as this seedling nursery in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil and many other projects in other countries including Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania & India.
Click Here to find out more about their amazing projects around the world.
Single rooms are available on a first come, first served basis, however, due to the nature of some of the accommodation we are using on this adventure (staying in yurts), there are 2 nights where single rooms are not possible, so the supplement price reflects this. We will charge on a pro-rata basis if a single room is not available to book for part of the trip where it would have been possible.
We fully believe in, and practice Responsible Tourism, using accommodation run by locals. We put time and effort into building our relationship with them to ensure you have a a great trip.
We choose accommodation based on cleanliness, comfort, safety, proximity to our route (to avoid unnecessary extra travel), and a warm client welcome, as well as reliability in their service to us. Some hotels will be basic, and in modern buildings and or in towns. Wherever we can, we will choose smaller more characterful, individual options, but in areas where tourism is still developing, this may not be available.
An aspect of our adventures is to escape the ‘trappings’ of modern Western lifestyles and to experience new things which is exciting and memorable, and reflects the countries we are visiting.
This is adventure travel and on occasion the advertised services at a hotel (eg wifi, or hot showers!) may not be functional on our arrival. This tends to occur in the smaller, more remote hotels. Very rarely a hotel lets us down and we are required to find alternative suitable accommodation that might not be our first choice.
The accommodation on this adventure involves both hotel stays and camping in gers/yurts. The list below gives information on our first choice of accommodation for this adventure. Where hotels and refuges are fully booked or unavailable, we will use an alternative of a similar standard, and equally well situated. We will provide you with an accurate list of accommodation, with contact information to leave with relatives, prior to departure on your adventure.
Ulaanbaatar (2 nights): Grand Hill Hotel: Damdinbazar street-52, Bayangol district, Bayangol, 212513 Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia Tel: +976 7711 5599. City centre location, with Wifi
Ger Camping (6 nights): A ‘ger’ or ‘yurt’ is a large felt tent made from sheep's wool, which results in a warm, cosy and waterproof shelter. The centre of the yurt houses a metal wood burner with a chimney for all smoke to escape through the roof.
Ger house either 2 or 4 simple, but comfortable beds with plenty of extra blankets to pile onto your sleeping bag (please bring a winter season bag), should you feel chilly. If you are travelling with a group of friends then we are happy for friends to share a ger (4 people), or YellowWood can arrange the rooming for solo travellers to share with others of the same gender.
Facilities vary depending on where we are staying. The ger camps tend to have running water and warm showers available, but when we are staying with families, there are only likely to be outdoor toilet facilities, and not showers or hot water. Please note that there is generally no electricity in the camps, and limited mobile signals, if any.
Supporting you on your holiday will be an in-country local guide who will be with us for the duration of the holiday; offering insight into local life and customs, as well as routes during walking/horse riding excursions. You will also be provided with an English-speaking ice-climbing guide for the Orkhon Waterfall ice climb over two days.
Your itinerary involves horse riding over rough terrain through heavy snow in the winter, with steep gradients at various times (when you may be leading your horse). To get the most of out of this adventure, you therefore need to be in good physical condition. You do not need to be an experienced rider but need to either have ridden regularly recently, or if more of a beginner, you need to have had several lessons of riding outdoors. This is for your own safety and confidence.
Once at our Ger camps in the evening however, (situated in flatter valley areas), there is the opportunity for you to head back out on optional faster canter/gallops. We can send you further information on what to expect from the riding prior to your trip.
You will be carrying just a soft day pack with camera, spare layers and a soft bottle of water. All other equipment is carried on horses.
As with all active holidays, the fitter you are, the more you can relax and enjoy the stunning route, and the better you can cope with challenges such as the outside elements. Clients are advised to get into a regular riding pattern before the trip as convenient.
Your YellowWood adventure starts at the airport in Ulaanbaatar. We understand that arriving into an unfamiliar airport can be very daunting, so we aim to give you as much information here as possible, to help you prepare.
Flights are not included in the cost of your holiday, and whilst we are happy to help advise you, responsibility for booking the correct flights rests with you. We recommend that you use a comparison tool such as www.momondo.co.uk or www.skyscanner.net when searching for flights. We will send you a Flight Information Sheet with further pointers on which flights to book for your adventure.
For the latest travel advice from the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), including security and local laws, plus passport and visa information, check www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice. We also receive notifications direct from the FCDO so we are always aware of the ‘status’ in our destination countries.
Chinggis Khaan International Airport is the main international airport in Mongolia, located 18km SW of the capital, Ulaanbaatar. It is a small, though fully functioning, airport with 2 ‘terminals’ that you may arrive into, at different ends of the same building.
You will be met at the airport by your YellowWood guide and a local driver for transport to central Ulaanbaatar (approx 30 mins)
On arrival you:
Toilets can be found in the arrivals lounge.
On arrival at your city centre hotel, you will be welcomed and have time to settle into your room.
Once the group have all arrived (they may be on a variety of different flights), you will be heading to a local restaurant for lunch and a trip briefing. This will be followed by a very interesting City Tour of Ulaanbaatar to kickstart your holiday!
Holiday insurance is essential for all Yellow Wood Adventures. Unfortunately anyone without insurance is not able to take part in the holiday, so please make sure you arrange cover. We recommend sorting your insurance when you book so that if you have problems during the run up to your holiday, and need to cancel, you are covered, particularly in the light of effects that the pandemic has had on travel.
Prior to the holiday, we will ask you to send us details of your insurer, policy number, 24 hr emergency assistance contact details and the name, address, and telephone numbers of your NOK or persons to be notified in the event of an emergency.
Your insurance needs to cover you for hiking /trekking and horse riding with the following fairly standard inclusions:
We would also recommend that you have cover for the following optional items:
YellowWood partners with battleface as a travel insurance provider.
Click through for a quote. https://app.battleface.com?partner=405
battleface insurance is provided in the UK by battleface Insurance Services Limited, a UK insurance intermediary authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Details provided on this webpage are for information only. Terms, conditions, exclusions, and limitations apply. Always read the description of cover contained within your policy to ensure it is suitable for your needs.
For information on Mongolia, such as climate, weather, language, social norms, food & drink etc, please have a read of our Country specific information.
Sophie Cantwell Kelly
Mongolia: Nomad Horse Riding Adventure, 2019
Emma
Highly recommend the YellowWood Mongolia horse riding adventure!
I had never been on a group tour before so was a little unsure of what to expect but found myself in a group of 12 really nice people of different ages and all walks of life from two younger Ukrainian women, three grown-up son’s with their father from the UK, a fireman, really friendly women from California, Australia and Scotland and a really great gay professional equestrian who looked after everyone and made jokes all the time. Although all of us different, our group really gelled together through our sense of adventure and experiencing something extraordinary – and it made it even more fun to be able to share these experiences together.
I’m not an experienced horse rider so I was also a little nervous about this too, but our Mongolian guide and horsemen looked after us so well I was free to just really enjoy myself and by the end I was cantering alongside the more experienced riders and just loved it! Mongolia is a fantastic country and I would recommend it to anyone. YellowWood picks itineraries that are unusual and really authentic – we stayed with local families and I really felt a part of the country – I can’t wait to do another trip with them it is a real eye-opener. Highly recommended.
Mongolia: Nomad Horse Riding Adventure, 2023
Will
Experience of a lifetime. This is the kind of trip where booking through a company like YellowWood makes perfect sense. We wouldn’t have achieved anything like the experience we had without the knowledge and expertise of YellowWood (if we tried to do it alone, frankly, almost all of it would have been impossible.) Our lovely guide Dawaa was so warm, informative, professional and was a really calming influence - she allowed us to really soak up the experience safe in the knowledge that we were in very reliable hands. Our drivers, despite speaking only a few words of english were so much fun, they really felt part of the group and everything they did for us was done with a smile. The scenery was absolutely awe-inspiring and the horses we rode were calm, very manageable for inexperienced riders and their strength and stamina was incredible. Thank you!
Mongolia: Nomad Horse Riding Adventure, 2023
Andy Walker
I don’t normally write reviews but on this occasion I felt I had to.
This was a trip of a lifetime for me and I learned to ride just for it.
YellowWood are a great company to go with. Sam (with his vast experience of travelling in the area) was a great leader and the the guides a drivers were very professional, kind and helpful.
The scenery was amazing and the horses were calm and could handle anything asked of them.
The group dynamics worked really well and everyone got on well and had a great experience. Sam and Dawaa our guide did everything they could to make the journey as smooth and pleasurable as possible.
I would recommend YellowWood to anyone and would travel again with them.
Thanks Sam.
Mongolia: Nomad Horse Riding Adventure, 2023
Receive a 15% discount off Water-to-Go filtration water-bottles to help reduce plastic waste.
All adventures can be tailored as private bespoke trips.
Please contact us for more information:
+44 207 846 0197
Select dates: Choose the dates for your adventure and consider adding any extra adventures or add-ons to enhance your experience.
Check the box to agree to our Terms & Conditions.
Make Booking: Click on "Make Booking." If you're booking more than 56 days before your adventure, you'll be redirected to secure WorldPay to make your deposit. If it's 56 days or less before your adventure, you'll need to make full payment. Rest assured, your money is held securely by the Travel Trust Association.
Your booking will show as 'pending' in your YellowWood online account.
Confirmation: We'll be in touch as soon as possible to confirm your booking or discuss any availability limitations. Please refrain from booking transport or flights until we've emailed you to confirm your booking. (Note: Receipt of your booking form is not confirmation.)
Making payment: Once your booking is confirmed, we'll change the status of your final invoice from 'Pending Approval' to 'Outstanding,' indicating that it's ready for payment online.
You will receive a reminder email for your final payment 56 days before the departure date.
Feel free to contact us with any questions about your adventure or booking, we're here to help!
To help you choose the right adventure for you, we have given each itinerary a grading that relates to the level of Walking / Trekking you will experience during the trip. This grading can be found on the Yellow map on the adventure page of the website.
All of our trips involve a level of general activity so are designed for people who are in good health, enjoy the outdoors, and have a taste for adventure and some level of fitness. As will be clear from our destinations, the climate (and altitude) may be different to that which you are used to, so please take this into consideration when choosing the most suitable holiday.
Please read our Adventure Itinerary & Essential Information for more information and don't hesitate to contact us if you would like to chat through whether you have found a suitable adventure for you.
You need to be in good physical health to enjoy your active holiday, but you don’t need to be an experienced hiker. These itineraries offer a mix of sightseeing and easier walking for around 2-4hrs a day, with the emphasis on sights and cultural experiences.
Walks will be well marked or on defined pathways, and often around sites of interest. The expected amount of descent/ascent will depend on the landscapes of the destination, but will not exceed 400m/day, and will often be much less. Walks are at low altitude (below 3000m).
You will not be required to carry more than a day sack with water and essentials. Ensure you are aware of the weather conditions likely in the destination you are visiting and have a pair of comfortable and worn in walking shoes/boots.
You need to have a good level of fitness and be a regular walker for these adventures, with ideally some trekking experience. You can expect to be walking for 3-6 hours per day, not including rest stops, normally on good trail paths but with some uneven surfaces at times.
You will not be required to carry more than a day sack. You may be walking in more challenging temperatures. You will generally be walking at low altitude (below 3000m) but may walk at altitudes up to 4000m. The amount of ascent could be up to 800m in a day but will frequently be less. You may walk on consecutive days.
Ensure you are aware of the weather conditions likely in the destination you are visiting and have suitable clothing for this adventure.
You need to have a good level of fitness with previous experience of trekking. Extra training before your trip will ensure that you get the most out of your adventure. Areas will be remote and terrain uneven.
Expect to walk for 5 – 8 hours a day, not including breaks, with some very steep ascents and descents. You will be walking at altitude (over 3000m but not higher than 5000m).
Ensure you are aware of the weather conditions likely in the destination you are visiting and have suitable equipment/clothing for this adventure (see the packing list for your adventure).
Please check individual itineraries for details of what you will need to be carrying with you.
CLICK HERE to schedule a call online with YellowWood Founder Sam McManus.
Or call us directly 24/7 on: