Is Mongolia Cheap for Tourists?
Mongolia is cheap for tourists who stick to Ulaanbaatar due to very affordable food, accommodation and transport within the city.
It can however be very expensive to get out of the capital city, see “the real Mongolia” and travel long distances, unless you have a lot of spare time. It also isn’t the easiest country to get to unless you’re in one of the few countries that are well-connected with Ulaanbaatar, the only destination in Mongolia receiving international flights.
Is Mongolia Cheap for Independent Travel?
Mongolia is not cheap for independent travel, unless you stick to Ulaanbaatar, or have a lot of spare time. And in all honesty, there’s no point in coming to Mongolia if you only plan to stay in the capital.
There are several cool things to do in Ulaanbaatar, but nothing worth coming so far out of your way for.
I arrived in Mongolia with the plan of travelling independently and spending a few days in the wilderness. However it did not quite go to plan.
Mongolian transport is infrequent, unreliable and if you really want to see what this incredible country is all about, you need several weeks to allow for long periods of travel.
I spent several frustrating days in Ulaanbaatar trying unsuccessfully to find a way into the countryside which is by far the main appeal of this amazing country.
After several days, I finally found a cheap tour to Terelj National Park and negotiated an itinerary change which would mean staying in a traditional Mongolian ger (yurt) with a nomadic family.
This rewarding experience was one of my all-time travel highlights, and that alone made Mongolia a personal favourite after visiting 69 countries at the time.
Whilst that was cheap, it was still an organised tour. Travelling independently is difficult in Mongolia.
Car Rental Costs in Mongolia
However, if you’re looking at going further than Terelj, it’s going to cost a lot. Let’s have a look at car rental costs in Mongolia.
The lowest price here is US$48 (£38) per day for a car including a driver. That doesn’t sound too bad right?
However, to hire an off-road vehicle, which is necessary for long-distance Mongolian transport, your start price is around the US$70 (£55) mark (one day’s car rental including a driver).
Still not too bad?
Realistically, you’re looking at a bare minimum of 3 days to see even a tiny bit of the real Mongolia. This takes your transportation costs up to US$210 (£166) for two days of travelling and one full day of exploring.
To be honest, you really need more time than that to see everything and enjoy it properly.
Of course there is some good news. These vehicles can hold several people (7 passengers in the case of the US$70 van), which means you can slash your costs right down by sharing.
In reality, most people don’t travel in groups of 7. Maybe for a lads trip to Ibiza or a family visit to Greece. But it’s unlikely you will find such a large group heading to an offbeat adventure destination like Mongolia.
If you’re a solo traveller or even travelling in pairs, your options are limited.
Do Buses and Trains Cover Long Distances in Mongolia?
It is possible to find buses that leave Ulaanbaatar for key destinations such as the Gobi Desert (Dalanzadgad and surrounding areas) or Karakorum, but these are unreliable in terms of timings as they often change.
Your best bet is to head to the main bus terminal (Dragon Bus Station, address: SHD – 29 khoroo, Ulaanbaatar 18072, Mongolia) and ask staff at the counter when the next buses are to your destination of choice.
I did find a useful timetable online. Checking at the Dragon Bus Station is still your best way to find the most up-to-date information however, but this gives a good rough guide.
Buses are at least very affordable, if also very long. The most expensive are 85,000 tugrik (£19/US$25) which covers the 30+ hour journey to Bayan-Olgii. Some, such as the 5+ hour trip to Karakorum cost as little as £5 (US$6) for a one-way ticket.
There are trains in Mongolia, most notably the famous Trans-Mongolian Railway which connects the Trans-Siberian Railway from Russia to China. However, trains don’t cover most of Mongolia’s key tourist spots, with Ulaanbaatar being the main stop of note between the two larger countries.
The Trans-Mongolian Railway does have a stop at Tavan Tolgoi however which is a two-hour drive from Dalanzadgad.
But really the bus is a better option.
How Cheap is Everything in Mongolia?
Mongolia can be cheap, but only if you have a lot of time. If you have to leave the country in under a week then you have two options: splash the cash or face being rooted to Ulaanbaatar.
I’ll break down the costs of everything you will need below.
Accommodation (Cheap)
The good news about finding a place to stay in Mongolia is that it’s super affordable. A dorm bed in Ulaanbaatar starts from £6 (US$8) per night.
Private rooms start from around double that, meaning the travel costs per person are roughly the same if we compare a couple to a solo traveller, with the added bonus of some extra comfort and privacy.
Now one of the Mongolia travel highlights is undoubtably staying in ger camps with local nomad families. This was my favourite aspect of the country by far, and the best thing is that it’s super cheap!
I paid 20,000 Mongolian tugrik (£4.60 or US$5.80) to stay in a chilly ger in the countryside, and you can expect to find similar experiences across the country for a similar price.
Food and Drink (Cheap)
A meal in a Mongolian restaurant will also cost around the 20,000 tugrik mark (£5 or US$6 if we round for simplicity).
Mongolian food is often much maligned, perhaps unfairly.
It is pretty basic but I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing. Just look at the tiny morsels of average food you pay dozens of dollars for at a fancy restaurant with 7-course meals.
Mongolia is all about substance over style.
Anyway, there are some specialist foodie travellers out there who traverse the globe and can give you more insight into Mongolian cuisine.
But regardless of the quality, it isn’t bad value for money.
Transport
Transport costs on your Mongolia trip can be split into three different categories: Transport into the country, around the country (long-distance), and within the town or city you are in (probably Ulaanbaatar for the most part).
Transport Into Mongolia (Expensive)
Flights
Mongolia is a remote country which is hard to get to from most places, and only has a handful of daily flights to it, all to Chinggis Khaan International Airport in Ulaanbaatar.
I was living in South Korea before heading here, and part of my reasoning behind coming to this country over others is because there is no better connecting nation to Mongolia than South Korea, which has several daily flights and attracts a lot of Korean tour groups.
In fact the “Koreanness” of Mongolia was one of the first things I noticed in the country. There were many Korean restaurants, Korean brands, Korean tourists and Korean products in shops. In fact I even met a Korean from the same city I’d worked in!
One-way flights from Korea are generally close to the £200 (US$250) mark. If you’re lucky then there are occasional flights for around half this price, but you’ve got to be paying close attention to spot those bargains.
Korea is usually the cheapest connecting country, and China is next. Flights to and from China only cost marginally more.
After that, your cheapest connections are via Japan, Thailand and sometimes Turkey.
Europe does not have good connections with Mongolia. If we exclude Turkey for a moment, Germany is the cheapest European country with links to Ulaanbaatar with one-way flights in the £300-400 range (US$380-500).
Trains
If you think you can save some cash by taking a train from neighbouring China or Russia, I have some bad news for you. Train tickets are not cheap either.
Whilst a one-way ticket can be bought for less than the cost of a one-way flight, you would need to get to China or Russia in the first place which more than cancels out any benefit of doing this.
Complicating things further, trains from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar have not resumed as of June 2024. Only those from Hohhot and Erlian. This means you have to get to those locations in northern China to begin with.
The cost of a one-way ticket from Hohhot is US$140 whilst it is US$85 from Erlian on the China/Mongolia border.
The other option is going from Russia, and since flights are currently very limited, it will cost you hundreds of whatever western currency you use (pounds, dollars, euros etc.) to get to Irkutsk, which is the closest major stop to the border.
In other words, it is not cheap to take the train to Mongolia. But China is the better option if you do.
I’d only advise taking the train into the country if you want that experience. It’s not a viable money-saving tactic.
Inner-City Transport (Cheap)
Here’s some good news, local transportation within cities is dirt cheap.
Mongolians use an app called UBCab as their equivalent of Uber… Kinda…
There’s good news and bad news.
Let’s start with the negative. UBCab doesn’t let you choose your destination and won’t tell you how much it costs up front…
You simply order a taxi, then show the driver manually where you want to go. You find out the cost when you arrive at your destination.
Now for the good news, a taxi will usually cost under £5/US$6 for a one-way journey. Sometimes much less. That is of course, assuming you do stay within the city boundaries and not go out for a longer trip.
Oh, and then you have buses. I found buses in Ulaanbaatar to be chaotic, with lots of people cramming on (locals also warned me about pickpockets). They are however ultra cheap with a one-way ticket costing under £1 (US$1.25).
Long-Distance Transport (Cheap With Good Planning)
In Mongolia you need one of two things to have the best experience in the country: time or money.
It is possible to find buses for 6+ hour journeys for relatively low prices. However, they will eat heavily into your time and won’t be comfortable given Mongolia’s notoriously bumpy roads.
A one-way bus from Ulaanbaatar to the Gobi Desert will cost no more than 51,000 tugrik (£12/US$15).
Whilst another popular place to visit, Karakorum, costs just 19,000 tugrik (£4/US$6) for a one-way ticket to or from the capital.
Bus transport is the best option for budget travel here.
Tours (Expensive – Usually)
Now this is where Mongolia can tear your budget to shreds.
There may be 12 months in a year, but only really 3-5 months (May-September at most) when you can visit Mongolia without some serious struggles with the intense cold.
As a result, this is when tour companies make almost all their money.
With only a trickle of tourism into the country each year, this isn’t like a Peru or Greece where hundreds or even thousands of companies offer cheap tours, knowing they will make money from the sheer numbers of people joining.
Mongolian tours are expensive.
But even more so if you look online. A quick search for “Mongolia tours” and one of the first websites I found, offered a US$135 (£107) day tour of Ulaanbaatar. Yikes.
Pro tip: you can do a free walking tour in Ulaanbaatar and visit the city’s other attractions independently with little effort.
Anything other than a day trip will cost several hundred dollars, or even thousands online.
You can however save a fair bit of cash by booking tours when in Mongolia itself. This is when it’s important to have a lot of the other important commodity in this country: time.
Send out a bunch of emails to hotels, hostels and guesthouses describing exactly what you want to do in the country. Or just go in and talk with the staff at the front desk who will be able to help.
It took me 4 days to find something suitable for my limited budget and short one week trip to the country. But it was well worth the wait when I did.
I booked through the excellent Danista Nomads, where I stayed for a few nights in one of their very affordable private rooms.
They offered a day tour to the Chinggis Khan Statue Complex and Terelj National Park for US$60 (£47), divided by the number of people on the tour. I did a custom version of this which involved staying overnight with a local family in a ger, learning all about their nomadic culture.
I also went horse riding with them, ate with them and helped with their livestock in the morning. That’s a story for another post!
However the total cost of this experience was £45.99 (US$58.24 at the time of writing). Just over half of that cost went on the tour mentioned above (split between two people). The rest covered all meals with the nomads, a night in their ger, an hour of horse riding, entry to a monastery at Terelj, and transport back to Ulaanbaatar.
Multi-day tours may still cost a few hundred dollars, but you can slash the costs by sharing with others.
Just be sure to have a few weeks in Mongolia, and book in person for the cheapest tours.
Is Mongolia Cheap for Solo Budget Travellers?
Mongolia is an expensive country to visit whilst travelling as a solo budget traveller.
In fact we are the most incompatible demographic for cheap Mongolia travel. This is a country that caters to large groups rather than individuals.
You can team up with people in your hostel or hotel, but this relies on luck as you don’t really know who you will meet in advance.
My top Mongolia solo budget travel tip: come here with a long time to spare.
Then you can manage to find transport out to more remote parts of the country, navigate the tricky logistics in a country where transport isn’t always reliable, and see the best places without spending a fortune.
How to Visit Mongolia on a Budget
To visit Mongolia cheaply, it’s important to plan in advance. My biggest mistake was turning up with nothing planned, a flight out after seven days, and the hope I could find cheap countryside excursions for around 3 days from Ulaanbaatar.
A big money saving tip is to go with other people. The costs begin to tumble when you share them with others. The more of you that go, the less it will cost per person to arrange a big adventure into the vast Mongolian Steppe or the famous Gobi Desert for example.
Or just stick to Ulaanbaatar. It’s very easy to find a budget hotel or hostel. Private rooms start from under £15 (US$18) per night, taxis and buses in the city are super cheap, likewise food and activities… However I do not recommend this option because Mongolia is about the wilderness and nomadic culture.
If you just want to see Ulaanbaatar, go to Soviet remnant Transnistria (Moldova) and take a trip to Seoul instead.
Why these two seemingly dissimilar destinations? Well the Mongolian capital has a strong feel of “the Soviet Union meets South Korea”. These two places combined have pretty much everything that Ulaanbaatar does and are much easier to get to, from Europe at least.
When is the Best Time to Visit Mongolia?
You have around a 3-5 month window in which to visit Mongolia if you wish to avoid the extreme cold this country is infamous for.
June, July and August are the best months to visit Mongolia as average temperatures are around 23°C/73°F during the day across the country and a respectable 9°C/48°F at night.
May and September effectively make up the shoulder season with both months averaging around 15°C/59°F at day and 4°C/39°F at night.
Outside of these months, temperatures can drop to as low as an average of -30°C/-22°F in the winter, particularly in the coldest months of December and January. Temperatures have even reached -40°C/-40°F at this time of year.
Ulaanbaatar is known as the world’s coldest city, experiencing such temperatures in the winter, helped by its position around 1,350m above sea level. The countryside feels much colder with the howling winds hitting hard when you’re out in the open.
Aside from weather, two festivals are a big draw to tourists hoping to see the traditional Mongolian way of life.
Firstly, the Naadam festival from July 11th-13th every year which celebrates wrestling, archery and horse racing – Mongolia’s three most famous sports.
Secondly, the Golden Eagle Festival in Bayan-Olgii which takes place in early October, where Kazakh nomads showcase their eagles in a series of hunting-based events.
My recommendation would be to visit Mongolia during the summer months, unless you have a strong desire to come for the Eagle Festival.
Otherwise, Mongolia tourism from October-April is something only a hardcore adventurer should consider.
