KHUSTAI TOUR

Khustai National Park (Wild horse Park) is located about 100km to the west of Ulaanbaatar. This area is home to the Mongolian wild horse known as Przewalski horse (takhi). Khustai has unique landscape that features mountain steppe and steppe, also there are sand dunes representing Gobi of Mongolia and River wetlands. The national park has 450 species of vascular plants, 200 of which are medicinal.
The National Park area is ideal for hiking, horseback riding, ornithology, flower watching, and nature photography. The horse is named after the Russian colonel Nikolai Przhevalsky (1839–1888) (the name is of Polish origin and "Przewalski" is the Polish spelling). He was the explorer and naturalist who first described the horse in 1881, after having gone on an expedition to find it, based on rumors of its existence. Many of these horses were captured around 1900 by Carl Hagenbeck and placed in zoos. As noted above, about twelve to fifteen reproduced and formed today's population.

Day 1. Khustai National Park. The Blue Gobi team will pick you up from your hotel at 9:00am. We will have 2 hours scenic drive to the Khustai National Park which is located 100km to the west. On the way , we will explore small sand dunes called Moltsog els. We will arrive at the camp and check into our gers. After some relax, we will visit Visitor Information centre and small museum at the park to see the reintroduction process and documentary film of the wild horse. After lunch we will drive to the Bayan village to see the Przewalski horses in their natural habitat. We will enjoy hiking, take photos and watching wild animals such as deers, marmots, rabbit and small rodents. We will visit nomadic families on the way back to our camp in order to experience everyday life of nomads and experience in tasting dairy products. We will come back to park and after dinner we have an opportunity to ride horses. Overnight at the ger camp.

Day 2. Statue of Genghis Khaan & Terelj National Park. After breakfast we will have two hours drive to Genghis Khaan’s Statue, which was built in 2006 via Ulaanbaatar. The statue is 40m high equestrian statue which is surrounded by 36 columns representing 36 Mongolian Khaans. The entire statue is covered by 250 tons of steel. We will ascend to the exhibition hall using an elevator at the back of the horse and will walk to the horse’s head to have a good panoramic view from top of the statue, then we will visit museum in the background. We will have a lunch there at the statue and after lunch we will drive to Terelj National park. On the way we will make a short stop on top the small mountain pass before we entering to the National park gate in order to see giant pile of stone called Ovoo, which was used for worship of religion. We will visit well known Turtle Rock, which is symbol of the National park, then continue to hike to the Aryanbal meditation temple, which sits on top of the mountain. In the late afternoon, we will visit local nomadic family to experience everyday life, exchanging conversation and tasting Mongolian dairy products. Drive back to Ulaanbaatar and transfer to hotel at 19.00PM.