The Ömnögobi aimag (South Gobi province) of Mongolia is a wide arid steppe, with a low barrier mountain range separating the Gobi Desert proper.
As many travellers do, we broke up our trip south with a detour to the spectacular Ikh Gazrin Chuluu National Park, a veritable garden of stone. Ikh Gazrin Chuluu lies east of Mandelgovi, the trip there gave us our first real taste of navigating the wide valleys of the steppe, where ‘roads’ are conceived in the loosest terms possible and GPS must be combined with ‘Navigation 101’-type attention to geographical features and compass headings.
Retracing our course (of a sort) to Mandelgovi, we then followed the asphalt to its southerly terminus at Dalanzadgad. From Dalanzadgad it’s out onto a shimmering plain dotted with the occasional nomadic camp and herd of camels.
Accomodation was in gers (yurt in Russian), the primary form of summer housing throughout Mongolia. It’s superb camping country but it quickly became clear that hosting tourists is a crucial source of income for local families as their traditional nomadic ranging lands suffer desertification due to climate change.
Check out pics from South Gobi here.