GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO!

The mid-July Naadam festival is in about a week! I went back in 2013 by lashing it onto a SE Asia trip using BKK-MNL and MNL-ICN on Cebu Pacific and a KE award for ICN-ULN for the key final segment (using SkyPass miles dating to 1992!) It took 5 hours in a cybercafe in February to align it all and bang the thing out (including my first trip to ICN as well), but it felt great realizing I was finally going.

Weather is great at that time of year and Naadam is the most famous festival, featuring 2 days of wrestling, archery, horse racing and bone shooting competitions. Locals also treat it like a big carnival. The opening ceremony is NOT TO BE MISSED and has all kinds of people in costumes with intricate moves.

Another way to get to the country and one that was done by backpackers was the 22-hour train trip from Beijing. I even met one who'd come in all the way from Moscow via train.

Do note that the Naadam venues are way too small for the demand now, and I was lucky to use a guesthouse I wasn't staying at to buy a package that included tickets and all transit, so I didn't have to worry about anything.

There are also lots of really epic trips out of UB like to the Gobi Desert or Lake Khusvogol, but those require at least a week.