Leaving the city: Terelj National Park

Honestly, the Mongolian country sight is what you should come here for, not the cities. The nature is what makes this country special and unique. Farness, emptiness, silence. Precious goods in Europe. Widely offered in Mongolia.

A good, soft and affordable entry to explore the Mongolian nature is the Terelj National Park, very nearby UB. My roomie and I jumped on the bus at Peace Ave for Nilaikh. Getting there took us around an hour. From there you can choose various options to continue to Terelj. Everyone would take you anywhere for 20,000 MNT (8 EUR, 9 USD). But if you wanna go like locals, take the bus for 1,500 MNT (0.60 EUR) and it’ll drop you off anywhere along the road.

We decided to get off at Terelj village. It didn’t take a sec until a local woman appeared, offering us her ger for 10,000 MNT (4 EUR, 4.50 USD) per night per person, which we thankfully accepted. So…how does a ger tent actually look like inside? Check here…

Everything’s kept rather plain and simple. Beds are hard, for washing bring your own water, toilet is a small, little, dark, wooden outhouse shared with 10 to 20 others. Absolutely fine for a one night stay. :) 

We then hiked around the area for quite a while. View was stunning. Air was clean. Sky was blue. Altogether this was really calming our city rushed souls. It took me a while, but I got into my meditation mode and could really just be there in present. Terelj is a good place for getting far away from city life and problems mentally without actually driving far away from city life geographically.

Temperatures drop significantly at dusk. There’s no way without heating the oven even in August. Also, always good to have a thick sleeping bag or extra blankets with you.

Since the nightly rain was flooding the non-paved roads, we decided to leave after getting up and slowly went to the bus stop to see where we can go from there. We were amazingly lucky to catch the bus waiting right there right when we got there. If you go by public transport in Mongolia, be patient and take it easy. Don’t expect timetables or signs to guide you through. It’s part of the Mongolian experience. The bus got us back to UB within almost 3 hours (for 45 km).