Anything Mongolia?
 

This section will be updated soon :-)

I'm looking forward to your updates!

From a quick search, it appears that the most affordable way to get to Mongolia would be with Aeroflot (on revenue tix), or Korean (on award tix).

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.

Wow, Lake Khuvsgul looks awesome in pictures! What would be the logistics of getting and staying there?

The guesthouse where I stayed (the Golden Gobi, IIRC) booked tours that worked out to quite a bit under $100/day, IIRC, including transport and all meals. You stayed in gers. Independently it would likely involve either flying or the 20-hour bus ride to Moron and then a shared van (or hire a car & driver) to Khatgal, which is another 3 hours. It was out of my reach on my trip so I didn't get to do, but it sounds interesting. Lodging choices would likely be very limited and possibly not well marked. Roads can really be more like mud tracks once you get out of UB. But you don't have to worry too much about crowds, and the high season is brief (June-August, if that)

In the time I wasn't at Naadam I explored around UB...was really disappointed the Lenin statue was gone but there's still an over-the-top Russian propaganda monument on top of a hill with views. Also a little-known Stalin genocide museum comparable to Tuol Sleng in Cambodia. I kept hoping for a tour group to get together for the national park and giant Genghis Khan statue, but finally did it with a car and driver hired for the day that I ended up partially sharing with people who were staying for a longer tour. The park has some beautiful scenery.

Good info and pics!

Thanks. If Air Asia or someone similar were able to fly to ULN it would really blow the lid off on tourism (at least during the 2-3 months the overnight lows are above 32F), so there's a kind of urgency to get there before possible crowds, kinda like there was with Angkor when I went in 1997 and 2000.

The Naadam stadium was also woefully small for demand (the city grew but it hadn't), and tickets for the opening ceremony had sold out instantly in February, I think it was, when they went on sale. Interested visitors had to buy scalps. I was saved by booking a $99 tour that included tickets from the guesthouse for the opening and closing, transit between venues (the horse one was maybe 10 or so miles out of town) and a meal or two. Worth it just for not having to worry over anything. Outside the ceremonies, people could drop in to watch at the venues for free.

They like Americans & gave 3-month visas on arrival.

Lake Khuvsgul is actually reasonably close to IKT airport. Unfortunately, that route requires a tedious and expensive visa process. Otherwise, one could visit Khuvsgul and Baikal on the same trip!

Folks considering travel to ULN or IKT in early 2018, might want to check out this thread for business class deal ideas.

Nice pictures of Mongolia.

Wonder what is the cheapest deal to fly there from Jakarta?

I second a visit during Naadam. I did not see all of it, but what I did see was amazing

Few other neat places nearby-ish to ULN
Mongols Els - sand dunes. Family stay here - wonderful
Kharkhorin/Orkhon valley. Camped - wonderful
Göktürk museum - Orkhon area. Obelisk with first recorded word for Turk (or something like that)
Hustai National Park. Przewalski's horses/Takhi
Genghis (Chinggis) Khan relatives (?) - some sort of imperial ruins. There are random and one can walk through/over/around. Some have active archaeology digs while others are simply just there (for lack of a better way to describe the sites)

I have a bunch more info if folks are interested -