3-Day Train Trip to Choir Bogd Mountain
Day-by-Day Itinerary
Ulaanbaatar → Choir by Trans-Mongolian Train
We pick you up from your accommodation at 15:00 and transfer you to Ulaanbaatar railway station to board train No. 276, which departs at 16:50. The Trans-Mongolian Railway, completed in the 1950s, links Mongolia with Russia to the north and China to the south, and this stretch runs southeast across the steppe. For the next few hours, watch from your window as the grassland slowly changes to the open, sparsely grassed semi-desert of the Gobi. The train arrives in Choir at around 21:20, where your local driver meets you and drives you about 18 km on a paved road to the tourist ger camp. Enjoy a late dinner and spend the night in a ger at the foot of the mountains.
Choir Bogd Mountain: Spring, White Tara & Caravan Statues
After breakfast, drive about 10 km on dirt roads to Tsoorkhoi Spring. Its water is icy cold in summer yet never freezes in winter, and locals have long drunk it for the good of their internal organs. Continue 10 km on dirt roads to the White Tara, a goddess figure 245 cm high and 170 cm wide carved into the granite at the site of the Tsogchin hall of East Choir Monastery. In 1828, when typhus spread around Choir Monastery and killed monks and laypeople alike, local people carved this Goddess of Longevity to stop the disease, and it is said there was no more fever afterward. Then explore Choir Bogd Mountain, seeing the Single Monk Cave and the Child Ovoo and hiking among its weathered rocks, and visit the camel caravan statues that mark the Tea Road from Beijing to Da Khuree (old Ulaanbaatar), once a vital artery connecting Asia and Europe. Drive 20 km on a paved road back to camp to see its small museum of treasures from East Choir Monastery. After a traditional khorkhog dinner, meat cooked with hot stones, board train No. 285 at 01:40 for Ulaanbaatar.
Arrival in Ulaanbaatar
Wake to the outskirts of the capital as the train rolls into Ulaanbaatar at around 07:05. We meet you at the station and transfer you to your accommodation, leaving the rest of the day free for you to rest or explore the city.