Gobi Desert Good value
Ger camps feed you — mutton, rice, soup — and the driver carries the rest. Bring what you cannot live without from Ulaanbaatar; the last shop is in Dalanzadgad. Water is bottled and in short supply; carry it.
Budget travel in Mongolia
What a visitor's money does in Mongolia: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Good value average across 4 guides · 5 is very cheap
Money
Mongolian Tögrög (MNT) · 1 EUR = 4,090 MNT · 1 USD = 3,560 MNT
Tögrög, in thousands. Golomt and Khan Bank change dollars and euros at the counter with a passport; the State Department Store has a booth. Cards work in Ulaanbaatar and at the tourist camps and nowhere in between.
ATMs
Avoid: nothing to avoid; there is simply nothing in the countryside
Use: Khan Bank, Golomt Bank, TDB
Every aimag capital has a machine; between them, nothing. Withdraw in Ulaanbaatar before leaving it.
Getting around
A short ride in Gobi Desert: 5,000–12,000 tögrög across town — very cheap
From the airport: From the new airport to the centre 60,000–90,000 tögrög, or the airport bus for a fraction of that
Any car is a taxi if you hold out a hand, at about 2,000 tögrög a kilometre; the app is the same price without the negotiation.
City by city, cheapest first
Ulaanbaatar Good value
Mutton, in every form: buuz (steamed dumplings), khuushuur (fried), tsuivan (noodles). Airag, fermented mare’s milk, at the ger camps. The city has good Korean and a coffee scene now; the State Department Store food hall for supplies before the countryside.
Lake Khövsgöl Good value
Fish from the lake — grayling, lenok — at the camps, and mutton everywhere else. The ger camps around Khatgal feed you; the taiga trip is what the guide packs. Bring coffee if you need it.
Terelj Good value
Camp food — mutton, buuz, salad — and airag from the herders. The bigger camps have a menu; the family gers serve what is cooked. Bring anything else from the capital.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
The guides in Mongolia
Gobi DesertMongoliaSand dunes that sing, flaming red cliffs full of dinosaur eggs, an ice canyon in the desert, and a week in a 4x4 between them
UlaanbaatarMongoliaThe coldest capital on earth, half of it gers on the hillsides, a monastery that survived the purges, and the only city in a country of horses
Lake KhövsgölMongoliaA lake with two per cent of the world’s fresh water, larch forest to the shore, reindeer herders in the taiga behind, and no road round it
TereljMongoliaThe steppe an hour from the capital: granite tors, a turtle rock, a monastery up a hillside, and a ger to sleep in with horses outside