Mongolia Altai

The briefing

Western Mongolia's Bayan-Ölgii province is the homeland of the Kazakh eagle hunters - nomadic people who have trained golden eagles for hunting across the Altai Mountains for generations. It is also the most remote and geographically spectacular part of a country where remoteness and spectacle are not in short supply. The Golden Eagle Festival in Ölgii, held each October, is the one event that every serious traveler to Mongolia aligns their visit around: two days of eagle hunters competing at full gallop across a hillside, their birds released from a ridge above and trained to land on the moving arm below. Treat Mongolia Altai as a base, not a circuit: the days get better when you stop moving the bags.

The Golden Eagle Festival in Ölgii, held each October, is the one event that every serious traveler to Mongolia aligns their visit around: two days of eagle hunters competing at full gallop across a hillside, their birds released from a ridge above and trained to land on the moving arm below. The sheer physical scale of the eagles - two-metre wingspans, three-kilogram bodies - is a shock the photographs do not prepare you for.

Outside the festival, the Altai Tavan Bogd National Park - a wilderness of glacier-capped summits on the border of Russia and China - is the trekking ground. A horse trek to the Potanin Glacier, with a ger camp in the valley and a nomadic family host who has never advertised on the internet, is the kind of travel experience that has become very difficult to find in the rest of the world and remains straightforwardly available here.

How to get there

Gateway airports: ULN, ULO. Build the rest of the trip around the arrival.

Book first

Flights - ULN → Stay near the trailhead or hut belt in Mongolia Altai → Operator - hut, permit, or mountain guide once the dates exist