Mongolia travel health
Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Mongolia, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Mongolia: Gobi Desert, Ulaanbaatar, Lake Khövsgöl, Terelj.
Required to enter
Nothing. No vaccination certificate is asked for at the border.
Recommended
- Hepatitis A
- Tetanus up to date
- Rabies for the countryside, where the dogs are working animals
- Tick-borne encephalitis for the northern forests in summer
Emergency number
103 for an ambulance, 102 for police, 105 for rescue
Care for visitors
Limited
Ulaanbaatar has private clinics used to foreigners; outside it the aimag hospitals are basic and the countryside is hours or days from any of them. Evacuation is a flight out, and the insurance should say so.
Ulaanbaatar’s winter air is among the worst in the world and the coal smoke gets into the chest. Marmots carry plague and are not to be eaten, whatever the herders say. Ger camp dogs bite; call out before approaching. Bottled water everywhere; the sun on the steppe burns.
The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health 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