I sent the tourists down into the valley and stayed behind with my camera.
Yolin Am is one of those places that stops making sense the moment you arrive. You have driven for hours through the Gobi Desert — flat, dry, the colour of dust — and then the ground opens and there is this: a deep canyon with green hills, running water at the bottom, and walls of dark volcanic rock rising on either side. In midsummer, there is sometimes still ice.
The name means Eagle’s Mouth. The canyon is protected as part of the Gurvan Saikhan National Park, and it remains one of the most quietly astonishing places I have visited in many years of guiding in Mongolia.
This photograph was taken from the canyon rim while my group descended to the valley floor. The composition is simple — three layers of hill receding toward a blue sky, the green sparse but insistent against the grey rock. No drama, no special light. Just the place, seen clearly, in the middle of the day.
That restraint is intentional. Yolin Am does not need help. The strangeness of green in the middle of the Gobi is already enough.
This print works well in spaces that appreciate landscapes without spectacle — a study, a reading room, or alongside other work from Central Asia.
EXIF data of the photograph
- Camera Model: NIKON Z 7
- Lens model: NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S
- Date taken: 14. 7. 2026
- Exposure time: 1/200s
- F-Number: f/9.0
- ISO speed ratings: 125
- Focal length: 70mm
- Size of the photo: 8256 x 5504px
