This video is part of a Travel Train series on the Trans Mongolian and Trans Siberian from Hong Kong. HK was the starting point for us in Asia to travel by train thru China, Mongolia and Russia up to the Arctic Circle and to Amsterdam and London, England.

Next on the bucket list was to visit Mongolia.

We stayed our first day away from Ulaanbaatar, in our first Ger camp just outside the old capital of Mongolia Karakorum. The local Mongolian family welcomed us with tea and biscuits into their home. A truly wonderful experience to see how the local people live. The main room is the lounge, kitchen and bedroom. Most Mongolian families look after their grandchildren until they are aged 6.

After a night's rest at Munkh suuri Guest house Ger Camp we set off to explore the town and get supplies for our next family, who live very remote in the Orkhon valley. The markets were not quiet open yet as we arrived, but the butcher was open already at 7am. Most families in Mongolia don't have bathrooms or fridges. Bathroom are simply a hole in the frozen ground and a fridge well most of the year, they don't need one. 70% to 80% of Mongolian people still live in Nomadic existence like us, but with solar panels and wind generations on the top of their roof to generate power for their TVs. We don't have a TV in our truck in Australia, we sit around the camp fire for our entertainment.

After a visit to the local markets, we set off for a day of 4wd driving thru the Orkhon valley.

As we drove along a local bridge has just collapsed, 2 weeks prior. Infrastructure does not get repaired in Mongolia over winter from October to April. It is just simply too cold outside, and Mongolia only has 4,800 km of paved roads. Mongolia is six times bigger than NZ. Mongolia is 1.5m sq kms and NZ is 268k sq kms. NZ has 83,000 km of paved roads in rural areas or 61% of paved road in rural areas.

We thought the local roads were not worse, than the remote 4wd tracks in Australia, however no grader come thru every six months to fix the road..it is as you find it. True wilderness. We loved this day of just driving thru the Orkhon valley. Noone around expect a few yaks.

Orkhon valley is unique due to its volcanic rocks and is UNESCO world heritage listed. Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape sprawls along the banks of the Orkhon River in Central Mongolia, some 320 km west from the capital Ulaanbaatar. It was inscribed by UNESCO in the World Heritage List as representing the evolution of nomadic pastoral traditions spanning more than two millennia.

We spent two days here with another nomadic family. We shared meals with the family, watched TV, went horse riding with them and even watched the stars in minus 16 with them. A truly amazing experience.


The next day Mark went horse riding, I followed them by foot. I had the neighbors dogs follow me, wherever I went..I was totally alone in this valley, then a local man comes past with his herd of Yaks. Wonderful to watch.

I walked to the Ulaan Tsutgalan waterfall, almost totally frozen. It is the water source for the local Nomadic families. At the beginning of December it will be totally frozen, we could hear the ice breaking off the waterfall. The local family have big drums with water, frozen of course, for over winter.

Truly the highlight of our 4x4 adventure in the winter thru Mongolia. We hope to visit the family again, when we drive from Australia thru Asia to Europe and back to Russia, Mongolia in the future.

Thank you all so much for watching! We hope you enjoyed the video and if you’re new to our channel we hope you will become an TNNZ member by subscribing to our channel for new videos every Sunday!

We are full time overlanders from New Zealand. This trip in 2019 thru China, Mongolia and Russia was a research trip to see, if we want to take our vehicle overland, the Nest, from Australia thru Asia, Mongolia and Russia. We intended to be away for 6 months, but 20 months later we were still overlanding in Europe now by vehicle. The COVID 19 is what brought us home to New Zealand. Our vehicle is stored in Australia. We are waiting for the borders to open again.. so in the meantime, we have finally time to process the hours and hours of videos taken on that epic overlanding trip of 20 months thru 36 countries.

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Made with Love and Passion for the Road,
Traveller's NEST team,
Ro and Mark

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