Staying at Ger Camps in Mongolia

On my recent trip with Overseas Adventure Travel, Mongolia and the Gobi Desert, one absolute highlight was staying for nine nights – three nights each – in three different ger camps. One was a couple of hours drive outside of the capitol city of Ulaanbaatar, one was on a serene and azure lake, and one was in the heart of the Gobi Desert. The itinerary called for a return to Ulaanbaatar after each of the three-night ger camp stays. The itinerary couldn’t have been more perfect.

OAT specializes in letting travelers stay in unique accommodations and truly experience the local culture, and on this they excel. But to truly appreciate the experience, I learned it helped to know more about the culture of this nomadic lifestyle, thousands of years old, which is truly vanishing as the younger people move away from the life style of the moveable ger, and into Ulaanbaatar where they have the stability of a job and don’t move every four months. 

A ger is often also called a yurt, but not in Mongolia. In the long history of Mongolia, both Turkey and Hungary (and Attila the Hun) played a part A yurt is how the Turkish referred to the gers and that is the case in Kazakhstan. While we met a Kazak family on the trip and visited with them in their uniquely colorful ger, I never heard it referred to as a yurt. Nevertheless, they are one and the same, and the experience of staying in them was truly one of a kind.

The reason gers are used by nomadic Mongolians is because they must move every four months or so to feed the animals they farm for food, milk, or skins. Horses, yak, sheep and camel are common animals there, and sources of income whose food source charges with the seasons. In addition, gers disassemble very quickly, a matter of minutes once they are empty. When they are reassembled, the furniture and other belongings are put in first. After that, the process of putting the poles in, the top on, and the surrounding felt on the round structure also goes very quickly. We were able to see this demonstrated at the end of our stay in the Gobi Desert, when we could fully appreciate them for their warmth and privacy.

We did pass many neighborhoods where we saw gers next to houses, but we were told the people still prefer to sleep in the gers because they keep warmer. Since I was there in late September at the end of the season, it was definitely cold at night, and the gers were absolutely keeping me warm. There were both fans and electric heaters inside our gers, but the locals appeared to stay warm by fire inside their gers. These round structures kept the heat inside very nicely.

While I enjoy the modern amenities of the gers, and staying so warm inside of them, it was fascinating to visit others to  see how they lived in this country of spoils left over by the Russians and Chinese most recently, Turkish and Hungarians in past centuries. We visited a Muslim Kazak family, whose tradition was to have extremely colorful belongings inside their gers; a shaman and heard about her healing abilities: a family with a multitude of horses, whose milk they sell; and those who milk yaks then sell the milk as well as make ice cream out of it, Others made yak butter and yogurt. They lived in such remote parts of the country, not necessarily near any other neighbors. Yet we understood they had created communities among themselves, even though they lived remotely from others.

After every family visit and other daily activities which enabled us to truly experience Mongolia, we of course returned to our gers which were part of a resort. Some were remote,  some were in areas that are being quite built up by other ger camps for tourists.  Yet it was the reality that this is changing society, with gers next to homes, and families living in both, as well as so many younger people moving away for the opportunities provided by the capitol city, that made my nine nights sleeping in gers so special.  Its not often I get to engage in the culture of a vanishing society. And as a traveler, I loved this unique experience all the more because of it.

All Photos Jann Segal