Ulaanbaatar Travel Guide - Best Things to Do in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Today I want to share my Ulaanbaatar travel guide with you. I’m here for a week at the invitation of a friend who’s from the city. He’s playing tour guide to 18 of us who have flown in from all over the world to see his home and experience the best of Mongolia.

Ulaanbaatar Travel

The first noticeable image on the road from Chinggis Khaan International Airport to Ulaanbaatar is the billboards. Large, shiny, and all in English.

Far from the land of Genghis Khan, this is the land of minerals and mining. The land of western investors.

But then we drive a bit farther and start to notice something else: sheep. And goats. And horses, cows, and yaks. We see large white gers, or nomadic tents, and we feel like we’ve been fooled by these billboards of westernness.

We start looking up from the herds and notice giant green hills. Above them a vast blue sky climbs to infinity above the horizon. The air is clean. The landscape is bucolic. This might just be pastoral paradise.

But no, not yet. We drive on and reach the edge of the city, where suddenly the fast, clear lanes of the highway give way to gridlock.

Traffic in Ulaanbaatar is without a doubt the worst in the world, with inexplicable 20-minute stops on city roads being commonplace.

But never mind that, we’re headed to the edge of the city near the green hills by the towering golden Buddha statue. Our destination lies beneath the watchful eye of a Soviet-era war monument.

Ulaanbaatar Travel: Day 1

In short, we’re headed to my friend’s house. 18 of us. In a convoy of four black SUVs with tinted windows. In Mongolia. It’s all a bit surreal.

My friend’s apartment is a gem, with views over the city and a lunch spread of traditional Mongolian food that could have kept me (me!) fed for a week.

Mutton dumplings, potato soup, and cookies made from fermented cheese were all on the menu. We eat, wondering how our stomachs will like the new foods.

Back on the road, our convoy crawls like a line of big black ants through the traffic. We’re headed to the Chinggis Khaan Hotel, our home for the next week.

We check in, and, after a late night in Beijing the evening before, we’re thankful for a nap.

Dinner that evening is at Hotel Mongolia, a resort on the outskirts of the city.

We drive past two-story concrete buildings nestled among ghostly white gers and modern skyscrapers, old and new all representing Mongolia’s traditional past and mineral-tastic future.

The hotel itself is a representation of both, with a building complex surrounding a clutch of gers and a restaurant that serves everything from milk-and-mutton soup to Chinese specialties and Italian pasta dishes.

In the distance, a busload of people wearing Canon T-shirts participates in team building events.

Ulaanbaatar Travel: Day 2

A few of us arise early the next morning to climb up to the Soviet monument near my friend’s apartment. It feels like we’re walking back in time.

Soviet tanks commemorating victory in World War II precede a circular monument with mosaics depicting the defeat of the Nazis.

The eternal flame in the center of the monument has long been extinguished, but the rest is maintained as if it had been erected yesterday.

After another lunch at my friend’s apartment, we head to the Altai Cashmere Factory. In a bizarre twist of gender-role reversal, we girls stand amazed as the guys try on sweater after sweater, modeling them and purchasing half the store.

The highlight for me is the subsequent factory tour, where we’re able to see the life cycle of cashmere as it goes from raw wool to finished garments.

After the tour it takes us over two hours to drive less than a mile to the Kempinski Hotel Khan Palace in Ulaanbaatar, where we have a late lunch.

Japanese is the cuisine of the day. We feast on tempura and sushi at Sakura Japanese Restaurant, washing it all down with hot sake.

We spend the twilight hours walking through the city, visiting what must be one of the last Lenin statues outside Russia and admiring the monolithic parliament building with its impressive statue of Genghis Khan.

On the way we pass by the first Louis Vuitton store in Mongolia. The store is said to have had the highest sales of any LV store in Asia in its first six months.

It’s a testament to the country’s growing importance as a mining powerhouse and the darling of western investors.

Dinner that night is at the Chinese restaurant at our hotel. It goes without saying that I eat too many pot stickers.

Food is followed by karaoke, which takes place in a private room on the lower ground floor. The room has an impressive setup, and Chinggis Khaan Vodka flows liberally alongside wine, beer, and whiskey.

Ulaanbaatar Travel: Day 3

The following morning we tour the Gandantegchinlen Monastery in Ulaanbaatar.

Our guide explains the history of the monastery and teaches us how to spin the prayer wheels to help our favorite World Cup teams win their upcoming matches (okay, so she might not have known the last part).

We walk through a room with a large golden Buddha, and another full of chanting monks, two of whom are young boys who hide behind a drum to wrestle for command of a scroll. Ah, holiness.

From the monastery we continue out to Terelj National Park, but I’ll save that adventure for a separate blog post.

Ulaanbaatar Travel: Day 4

We travel back to Ulaanbaatar the following afternoon to get ready for a special dinner at our friend’s family’s home. We meet his parents and siblings as well as some of his cousins, and enjoy a lovely meal in a sophisticated setting.

After dinner we promptly let our unsophisticated sides take over. We return to our friend’s apartment and stay up until 2:30am to watch Germany succumb to Spain in the World Cup.

Ulaanbaatar Travel: Day 5

The subsequent two days are mellow with a dose of rain. Mongolia boasts of 260 days of sunshine per year, but having had such an amazing trip up to this point, we can’t ask for perfection.

We lunch the first day at the Grand Khaan Irish Pub in Ulaanbaatar. The food is good, although the Guinness milkshake isn’t quite what we expected (more Guinness milk than shake).

We have dinner that night at the a restaurant and lounge on the top floor of the building that houses the aforementioned Louis Vuitton shop.

Ulaanbaatar Travel: Day 6

The next day we take a tour of my friend’s family’s office and visit the Mongolian Stock Exchange.

That afternoon we cajole one of the drivers into taking us to the Black Market in Ulaanbaatar (also called the Narantuul Market), which is rumored to be the largest open-air market in Asia.

A friend of our friend comes with us as a guide and takes us through all the different areas.

We see the textiles section with its multicolored bolts of silk, the antiques area with its beautiful bells (apparently parents sew them to their children’s clothes to keep tabs on their whereabouts), ancient teapots, and big bowls of animal-bone game pieces.

We walk through the clothing market, which is crammed with rows of traditional boots, hats, and furs. At the end we come to the most interesting part of the market, the ger section.

Everything needed to build a ger is present, from the latticed wooden frame to the thick exterior wool padding to the colorful orange circles that make up the top.

1,000 US dollars would buy us a ger. I want one, but I’m not sure where I’ll put it back home.

After the traditional goods at the open-air market, our day takes a sharp turn towards haute couture. That evening we attend a FashionTV party in Ulaanbaatar.

Impossibly tall runway models, Altai Cashmere fashion shows, and Mongolian vodka are the words of the evening.

I get interviewed while walking down the red carpet, but the guys are the big winners. They get to meet the models after the show.

When the party winds down, 40 of us cram into our SUV convoy and take off for a popular club in Ulaanbaatar.

Ulaanbaatar Travel: Day 7

The next day we’re back in Terelj National Park, and the following day is our last one in Ulaanbaatar. And our best. It’s the opening day of the Naadam Festival, an annual event in Mongolia that takes place over three days in July.

Characterized by wrestling, archery, and horse racing, the Naadam Festival is the reason most people visit Mongolia. And just to keep you in suspense, I’m going to save it for another blog post.