Mongolia is a beautiful country and I am honored to have been able to spend a year here while studying in college and then return several more times as a tour guide. During these stays in Mongolia, I took some landscape photos. And I plan to take many more, so hopefully, more photos will be added over time 🙂

Lake Khövsgöl

In this part of the Khövsgöl lake, the waves have created a strange triangle of sandbanks which has given rise to lagoons full of nesting birds. They will swoop down and chase you away when you get close, which happened to me with one hoopoe and one gull :).

The photo was taken in the southern part of the lake, where there are tourist camps. If you walked further north, you wouldn't meet many people on the way. And after about 100 kilometers, you'd reach the Russian border. The photo is available for free download.

This image of a tent on the shores of the Khövsgöl lake is probably not a classic landscape photo (although there is a landscape in the background 🙂 ), but I decided to include it here anyway.

It is the tent in this photo that is interesting. Those of you who know something about Mongolia know that the Mongolian traditional dwelling is a yurt. This type of A-shaped tent is reminiscent of Tibetan tents. It is rarely used by Mongolians, for example when they need to stay somewhere for a short time and cannot or do not want to carry a yurt. Of course, I am talking about people who live closer to the traditional way of life. Modern, mainly urban Mongolians use tourist tents quite commonly. The photo is available for free download.

The lake is also called "Khovsgol Dalai", which means "Khovsgol Ocean". Note the word "Dalai", Mongolian for the ocean, used by the head of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama (translated as "Ocean Lama", meaning "Ocean of Wisdom".

Yaks, cows, and sheep graze on the shores of Khovsgol Lake. When you approach them, they usually get scared and run away. But the best thing is when you're in a yurt and the yaks bite the grass next to your head all night. The sound is really unforgettable :). The photo is available for free download.

The Gobi Desert

I took this photo with a telephoto lens as my driver and I waited for our clients (I was a tour guide) to step out onto the dune to take a sunset photo. Since I had climbed this dune the year before, I skipped this experience and preferred to relax for a while 🙂

The photo was taken in the South Gobi (Dundgobi) region of Mongolia. Specifically in the Khongoryn Els area.

The hills in Mongolia's steppe landscape often form magnificent silhouettes, which particularly stand out at sunset and sunrise. I took this photo from a yurt campsite near the famous Yolin Am Gorge in the South Gobi Aimag.

I took this photo from a yurt campsite near the beautiful sand dunes called Khongoryn Els (also known as the Singing Dunes). The combination of the telephoto lens (I used the focal length of a 300mm APS-C DSLR) and the hot shimmering air makes the photo look like it was painted.

There are four white yurts in the foreground with high sand dunes behind them and arid mountains in the background, with the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia already beyond. The photo is available for free download.

I took this picture after a rather challenging climb to one of the highest sand dunes in the area called Khongoryn els in South Gobi Aimag. The dune was only about 200m high, but the climb up was quite challenging. Every step up you took, you moved a little bit lower 🙂 The photo is available for free download.

I took this photo of the landscape with the setting sun and yurt near the entrance to the Yolin Am area, which is part of the Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park.

Although this is an area of the Gobi Desert, the landscape here is much greener and seemingly full of life. Especially the gorge in the valley is beautiful.

The photo was taken at the camp - the yurt you see is part of it. The camp was in a beautiful place, but my memories of it are rather mixed. I was there as a tour guide and our car had just broken down (again!!). The poor driver spent almost the whole night fixing it and finally got it right. Also, the owner of the campsite was not very nice, which is not at all usual in Mongolia.

But in the end, everything turned out well, the driver fixed the car and we could go to explore the gorge in the morning and then further north. The photo is available for free download.

It is a modern hotel "Gobi Caravanserai "in the middle of the inhospitable Gobi Desert. It is located in the Dund Gobi (Central Gobi) area specifically at the beautiful rock formations called Tsagaan Suvarga (meaning White Stupa).
I photographed this beautiful building, which blends perfectly into the surrounding landscape, one late afternoon when I finally had a break from the tourists I was in charge of.

We were not staying at this hotel directly (it was too expensive for us) but right next to it in a yurt camp. So at least I had a nice view of the hotel 🙂 The photo is available for free download.

This architectural and landscape photography is a sort of "artistic" rendition of the Gobi hotel photograph you see pictured above.

I have an interesting memory of this landscape photo. Shortly after my tourists (I was there as a guide) and I finished our tour of the lower part of the rock complex, I waited by the car for everyone to meet up to go to the campsite. Suddenly, though, we saw strange yellow clouds in the distance. The clouds weren't in the sky but were already stretching out from the ground and forming a sort of huge wall that was coming towards us at great speed.

After a while, I realized that it was a sandstorm. I wanted to run to get the rest of our group but I couldn't. Within seconds, we were surrounded by an impenetrable cloud of flying sand and we couldn't see a step. We couldn't even breathe, so we all sat down on the ground and covered our eyes and mouths with our t-shirts. I was very scared that someone would get hurt. It would be very difficult to get medical help in such a remote wilderness.

But in the end, everything turned out well. The storm subsided after a few minutes and we all came together safely. You can download and use this photo for free.

I took this photo from a yurt camp near The Flaming Cliffs area (also known as Bayanzag) in the Gobi Desert.

The Bayanzag area is an important paleontological site. To this day, when you visit the site, you'll find interesting fossilized trees and maybe something else. Especially at sunset, it's beautiful. The rocks turn red-orange and look really majestic.

I have a memory associated with this photo. I was there as a tourist guide and was constantly dealing with a lot of problems: a broken car, planning the trip and accommodation for the next day, tourists' complaints, etc. But everything seemed to be fine that day. The hikers were rested and in the afternoon we were supposed to go by car to the rocks. But I couldn't find our Mongolian driver. Eventually, I found him hiding with the locals somewhere behind the house drinking vodka.

The driver was obviously drunk and there was a problem. I couldn't drive myself, it was his car, and it's just not the Mongolian way. Should I tell the tourists the truth, saying we're not going anywhere? They'll be pissed because they paid for it and they want to see Bayanzag. Or should I just do as if nothing happened and let the driver drive? And what if the tourists recognize it? Or what if we crash? That'd be a real mess.

I finally decided to hit the road with a drunk driver. I could see that even though he was drunk, he could handle the driving, so I just prayed that his drunkenness wouldn't be recognized by the clients. Luckily the driver only spoke to me in Mongolian so the clients didn't understand what nonsense he was saying. In the end, everything went well and I "survived" another difficult day for the guide.

Flaming Cliffs - Bayanzag is one of the most famous paleontological sites of dinosaur fossils in the world. It's where the first dinosaur eggs were discovered. Other finds in the area include specimens of a velociraptor and eutherian mammals. In the early 20th century, the American paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews explored here.

The Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature Reserve (Small Rock Formation) lies on the border of central Mongolia and the Dundgobi region. It is a beautiful landscape full of small rock formations. Although it is only about 2 hours away from Ulaanbaatar, the last part of the journey is very challenging.

If you don't figure out which way to go beforehand and just follow the GPS as we did back then, a boring trip can turn into an unforgettable offroad adventure.

Along the way, we came upon a road that looked more like a riverbed strewn with large rocks. Fortunately, we were driving an old Russian UAZ off-road van, and bit by bit we conquered the road.

Northern Mongolia

Amarbayasgalant Monastery is one of the three largest Buddhist monasteries in Mongolia. It is situated in a beautiful hilly landscape where there is nothing far away. Next to the monastery, there is a small village with wooden houses and several yurt camps (ger camps) in the area. Around the monastery, several other stūpas, Buddhist statues, and other religious buildings have been built in recent years.

Central Mongolia

This is how I imagine a wonderful place to live. At least in summer :). I took this yurt near Orkhon waterfall in Övörkhangai aimag in central Mongolia. The yurt is located in a really beautiful place, surrounded by a steppe, small rocks, and a river. It was from the opposite bank of this river that I took this photo.

As a tourist guide, I had arranged accommodation with a local elderly lady. The whole camp had only about four yurts and the fifth one was occupied by this nice lady and her family. As this campsite was a little further away from the waterfall with many tourists, there was a nice calm and a very relaxed and laid back atmosphere.

The landscape around Lake Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur in central Mongolia is beautiful. One part is a volcanic landscape with the relatively recently active Khorgo volcano - it was active some 10,000 years ago, but to the eye, it looks like it was a few decades ago.

On the other side of the lake, there are high hills with snow on their peaks even in the middle of summer.

There are a number of nice yurt camps here. You can choose whether to stay in the "luxury" campsites with beautiful yurts, dining rooms, bathrooms, and flush toilets, or whether you prefer the more modest but often more pleasant family campsites.

At the time this photo was taken, we were staying at the more luxurious campground and were once again fixing our car because the day before while wading in the river, we had not only gotten our shoes and everything else in the car wet, but we had also punctured the radiator of our van.

I took this image at Lake Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur in central Mongolia. Our driver was just finishing up another repair on our Russian van when I noticed how the evening sun was beautifully highlighting the surrounding landscape. I put my telephoto lens on my camera and took pictures of the peaks of the surrounding rocky hills. This one caught my eye the most because of the thick cloud behind the rock and a small cloud above it.