Mongolia 2020

Our Photo Tour to Mongolia, is one of our biggest bets for the year 2020. Wild territory, deserts and coexistence with nomads, Mongolia is a perfect destination for all of us who love nature, great landscapes and, no doubt, for any landscape photographer.
Located between Central and Eastern Asia, Mongolia is the country with the lowest population density in the world, dominated by huge steppes and the Altai Mountains to the west and the Gobi Desert to the south, which we will visit on our 15-day trip. During our stay in the country of Genghis Khan, we will live with Mongolian nomads who preserve their traditions for centuries, and who will offer us the possibility of photographing them during their daily life, especially their best known hunting form: mounted on horses and with the Eagles help.
To all this, we must add the fact that we are talking about a very little explored area, which is still wild, being for many a totally unknown territory. This makes it, without a doubt, an even more amazing adventure. In order to make this trip more complete, we will spend the night in tents during a large part of its days, in the middle of nature, next to the nomads in the steppe or in the desert itself. In this way, we will be able to photograph the most spectacular and, at the same time, most exclusive locations. Always looking for the best light moments, surrounded by a unique natural environment, in a wild territory.
For a trip like this, we will have the services of an expert local company, which will be in charge of guiding us, assisting us and preparing everything we need during our trip, so that we only have to take care of enjoying photographing places. A special photographic journey, an authentic adventure, which will allow us to get where others only dream, and photograph landscapes through which hardly anyone has passed.
With the support of our team of guides, drivers and local experts, we offer you an incomparable Photo Trip, towards wild routes, in search of really unique images. Thanks to them, our professional photographer, Sergio Lanza, will be able to focus on helping you achieve the best possible photographs of Mongolia, contributing all your experience and knowledge in photography, and taking you to the most amazing locations of the destination.

ITINERARY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC TRIP TO MONGOLIA

Day 1

Our Photographic Trip to Mongolia begins on August 7th, 2020, at the Ulan Bator airport, the group’s meeting place at an hour that we will agree. This first day, we will take the opportunity to meet and rest, after a long trip here, and before the great adventure at hand.

Day 2

Today, we will take a flight to Ulgii (included in the price), to the first of the areas we will explore in Mongolia, the province of Bayan-Ulgii, where we will live with the Mongol nomads in the steppe at the foot of the Altai mountains. This day we will arrive at the hunters’ camp with an eagle, where we will have dinner with them and spend this night. From the moment of our arrival, we will have the possibility both to talk with them, and to photograph them in their daily tasks. In addition, we will have the possibility of making our first session at sunset, of the incredible landscapes where nomads move during the summer.

Day 3

During this day, after getting up early to make a session at dawn, we will begin to visit the Mongolian landscapes accompanied at all times by our guests, who will be dressed in traditional Mongolian costumes riding horses carrying the eagles to be able to photograph them as we wish throughout the day.
Together with our guides, we will choose the locations through which we will move, and where we can photograph our hunters with eagles in them posing in these incredible landscapes.
In the evening we will return to our camp, where the nomad family will taste us with typical Mongolian food. At night we can take night photography around the camp to capture the milky way.

Day 4

This last full day in the area with the nomads we will use it to photograph some of the locations that had pending in previous days. Otherwise, we will visit other locations and views of this area, or we can even repeat any of the above under different lighting conditions.

Day 5

This will be our last day with the nomadic family in the steppe, we will use the morning to take our last pictures at the camp, before leaving to the mountains of Khurgan, where we can photograph these incredible mountains surrounded by lakes with the lake Khoton, or impressive waterfalls with snowy peaks in the background.

While our guides set up camp for the next two nights, we will explore and photograph these landscapes to prepare to photograph the sunset near the lake, as well as being ready for night sessions where the null light pollution will allow us to make extraordinary night photographs.

Day 6

Today we will go back to the same lake from which we photographed the sunset the day before, in this case to capture the first lights of the day. Often, it is at this time when we are lucky to photograph under conditions of absence of wind, which would help us achieve those beautiful reflections in the lake’s waters. From the shore of it, we can see the incredible mountains of Khurgan in the background.

After this, we will make a simple hiking route to explore the valley in which we are located. We can even do an optional slightly longer trekking, which would lead us to see petroglyphs of the Bronze age, which we will value depending on the energies we have at the moment.

In the afternoon, we will go back to the lake, to photograph a new sunset from it. In Mongolia, the weather can be quite changing, and this means that the light conditions tend to vary very frequently, so it is likely that we can enjoy very different sessions from each other. In addition, as soon as we move along the edge of it, we can achieve very varied compositions.

After our sunset session, we will return to the camp where we will again have the possibility of taking night photography.

Day 7

Today we will disassemble our camp, to resume our way to Ulgii, the town where we spent the night a few days before. Here, we will have time to rest a little, recover and relax after these first days of intense photographic activity in Mongolia.

We will spend the night in the same accommodation where we were at the beginning of the trip.

Day 8

Today we will take a flight back to the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator, where we will spend the day and rest before embarking on our second part of the trip to the Gobi desert.

Day 9

We will get up early to start our trip to the Gobi desert. After traveling 250 km we will reach our first destination, the rock formations of Baga Gazariin Chuluu. At a height of 1751 meters (1.09 miles), they form a granite canyon erected in the heart of the steppe, and give entrance to the desert with landscapes that can remind us of the Western United States. Some of the side entrances of the canyon are not very accessible, but most allow you to enter and make wonderful walks in this rocky labyrinth, and that of course offer us some wonderful photographs throughout the tour. At dusk we will have the possibility to make our first session in this part of Mongolia, before returning to the camp where we will have dinner and we will be able to take night photography among the rocks of this impressive canyon.

Day 10

Today we will continue our route to Yolyn Am, stopping to photograph the Tsagaan Suvarga (white stupa), a 400-meter-long cliff that formed 10 million years ago when it was covered by a sea. The erosion caused that the rock will form these distinctive structures and that the rock will take purple, yellowish and white colors.

We will arrive at our destination at noon, where we will meet a new nomadic family that will host us at their camp at night. Once established in the camp, we will drive to the Yolyn Am canyon that bears the name of the almost extinct bonebreaker. Yoliin Am is an oasis in the Gobi desert, and is part of the great national park. We will visit its gorge, where we can photograph both in the canyon and at the top of the cliffs to the Siberian ibex, while walking through this location that even on hot days it remains cold due to the absence of sun and even snow in some parts.

Once the tour is finished, we will return to the nomad camp where we will have dinner and we will once again have incredible night sessions both outside and inside the typical nomads’ tents.

Day 11

Today we will continue our tour of the Gobi desert, until we reach the sand dunes “Khongoryn Els”. These are really impressive sand dunes that reach a height of 800 meters, 20 km wide and about 100 km long, which of course, always move and change. They are also known as the “dunes that sing”, since when it is windy the grains of sand rub each other making a unique sound. In these landscapes we will camp for two days, being able to take pictures of the desert landscapes with camels.

Day 12

During this day, we will explore these stunning desert landscapes of the Gobi. We will walk through its dunes, live among camels and seek to enjoy the wildest and most inhospitable nature of Mongolia. Throughout the day and especially at sunset, we will have the possibility to photograph the most remote and impressive landscapes of one of the largest deserts in the world.

As every day, at night, we will take night photography where the starry sky will offer us all its splendor given its low light pollution.

Day 13

Today, during our last full day in the Gobi desert, we will approach to photograph the Bayanzag area, named for the tree-shaped bushes, similar to the American Joshua tree. It is also known as the “flaming cliffs”, given the orange color that glows with sunlight, and that will remind us of landscapes of the American West. In addition this area is known as the first where dinosaur eggs were found, in addition to their bones such as velociraptor.

As always, the best time of day to photograph in this area will be the sunset, where the rock will take even more intense colors. Given the rock formations of the area, we can make magnificent compositions of this part of the Gobi desert, as well as being ready for night photography in the area, where we will camp our last night.

Day 14

On our last day in the desert, we will take the road back to the capital. We will pick up the camp and head back to Ulan Bator, the capital, where we will spend the last night of this fantastic Photo Trip to Mongolia.

Day 15

The trip will end with the transfer to the airport, so make sure you have your flight back by August 20, 2020.