Friday 5th July – Beijing

• Arrive in Beijing. Meet up at 11:00 sharp in the Zhong Gu hotel lobby. There you will be introduced to your YPT tour leader before he takes you for lunch and everyone gets to know each other.
• After lunch, we will head to the train station with our passport to pick up our pre-booked tickets.
• Catching our train to Jining South Station
• Transfer to another train from Jining South Station to Erlian
• Overnight on the train.

Saturday 6th July – Erlian/Ulan Bator

• Early morning arrival in Erlian, a weird border town of Inner Mongolia which tried to become a tourist attraction by promoting dinosaurs. Fossils have been found here
• After grabbing breakfast near the station, we’ll head by taxi just outside of town to visit the kissing dinosaurs of Erlian. They are the biggest dinosaur statues in the world.
• Head back to Erlian for some exploration of the city
• Lunch of mongolian fare in Erlian
• After lunch, we will cross the border to Mongolia by car and go through border formalities (it can take a while)
• Arrive in the border town of Dzamyn Ude, Mongolia!
• Catch our train to Ulan Bator in the early evening
• Overnight on our Mongolian train with you YPT guide there to keep you entertained with travel stories and games! That is, if we don’t come across some new Mongolian friends already.

Sunday 7th July – Train/Ulan Bator

• Arrival in Ulan Bator before noon.
• We get picked up by our local guide at the train station
• Head to our centrally located accommodation.
• Lunch in Ulan Bator
• For those starting the tour in Ulan Bator meet no later than 3pm at our hotel lobby.
• Dinner where we will get to know our new members of the group and have our first look at the nightlife of Ulan Bator
• Overnight in Ulan Bator

Monday 8^th July – Mount Khogno Khan Natural Reserve

• Up early as we have to drive to Mount Khogno Khan Natural Reserve, 250km away from the capital. This park contains a bit of all landscapes iconic of Mongolia, with sand dunes, the steppes and the taiga. Its ecosystem is extremely varied, with birds, gazelles and deer.
• Our cook will prepare us a delicious lunch in the park.
• In the afternoon, we’ll get the opportunity to do some more hiking or go camel riding in the nearby dunes.
• Dinner and overnight in a traditional Mongolian family Ger, where we will sample Mongolia`s legendary nomadic hospitality.

Tuesday 9^th July – Terelj National Park

• Up early again. Today, our day is dedicated to driving to the Terelj National park. On the way, we’ll stop by Turtle Rock or Melkhii Khad, a rock formation that bears a striking resemblance to its namesake animal.
• Lunch prepared by our cook
• We start exploring the National Park trekking around accompanied by our expert guide. The park is famous for Khagiin Khar lake and the Tuul River which flows through it. We will also get the opportunity to visit a traditional Mongolian Buddhist temple.
• Dinner and overnight once more in a traditional Mongolian family Ger,

Wednesday 10^th July – Terelj National Park

• It wouldn’t be a Mongolian adventure without a horse ride so we’ll ride around Terelj National Park like the Khan meant it to be.
• Lunch with our personal cook
• We start making our way back to Ulan Bator. On the way back, we’ll stop by the enormous statue of Genghis Khan, which we’ll be able to climb to appreciate the view.
• Arrival in Ulan Bator for dinner and overnight before the big day!

Thursday 11^th July – Ulan Bator

• TRIP HIGHLIGHT We partake in the first day of the Naadam Festival. Spirits will be high all across town as Mongolians reunite for the event of the year, showcasing their culture through a competition involving the three main sports: wrestling, archery and horse racing.
• We attend the opening festival ceremony. The nine tribes of Mongolia are escorting a horse tail of Genghis Khan to the stadium, accompanied by horsemen, monks and dancers.
• We will attend the first rounds of the horse racing competition. Races can include thousands of horses with child riders and span over more than 10 kilometres.
• Head back to our hostel to try a traditional meal of Khuushuur, a deep fried meat pie which we will rinse down with fermented mare’s milk, like the true Mongolian warriors we’ll be by then.

Friday 12^th July – Ulan Bator

• Wake up nice and early for breakfast
• We go and spectate the second day, this time watching wrestling in the stadium. Mongolian wrestling is unique in that the wrestlers are not divided by weight and compete all together. We will get the opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the special costumes the wrestlers wear.
• Lunch on site
• We head outside the stadium to see the archery competition. Here, we’ll witness archers shooting arrows over a distance of 75m using the infamous Mongolian Compound Bow which was instrumental in Genghis Khan’s conquest of the world.
• For dinner, we’ll head to a Mongolian hotpot restaurant to gorge on delicious lamb meat and then head out to check out Ulan Bator’s night life.
• Overnight in Ulan Bator

Saturday 13^th of July – Ulan Bator

• Up early for our city tour of Ulan Bator
• After breakfast, we’ll head slightly out of town to visit the enormous Zaisan Memorial which will not only offer the best view of the city but also an enormous fresco commemorating the sacrifices of the Red Army which came to liberate the Mongolians from the Japanese. On our way down, we will see a tank memorial.
• We head back into town to visit the Memorial Museum of Victims of Political Persecution. Here, we will learn more about the dark side of the Soviet rule of Mongolia and the impact its omnipresent secret police had on the locals.
• Lunch at the nearby Chojin Temple Restaurant.
• We head to the Gandantegchinlen Monastery, one of the most important site of Mongolian buddhism. During the communist reign, it was the only monastery allowed to function even though it only did so as a token homage to Mongolian culture while most others religious sites were destroyed and their lamas executed.
• We head slightly north to the Sukhbaatar Square, place where the very iconic statue of Genghis Khan, most famous Mongol of all history and terror of the western world, is located.
• We go to the outskirts of town to visit the Military Museum of Mongolia. Warning: Soviet tanks galore!
• Dinner in a restaurant nearby our hostel.
• Overnight in Ulan Bator

Sunday 14^th July – Ulan Bator

• Free time to check out the last things we wanted to see around the city and buy groceries for our train ride.
• We board the overnight train 305И to Ulan-Ude at 15:22 and arriving the next day in the early morning.

^{Monday 15th} July – Ulan Ude

• We check in and rest in our hotel for a while.
• Meeting our new group member joining for this part of the tour at Hotel Marrakech at 10am.  Your tour guide will go through our itinerary before we head off in the city of Ulan-Ude
• We go check out Ulan Ude’s world famous Lenin Head Statue. It is three-story high!
• We then head to Victory Park, the biggest park of Ulan-Ude, filled with soviet statues and the best place to people-watch in Ulan-Ude
• Lunch at restaurant Tengis, specialised in Buryat fare.
• We take a taxi and head north to Ulan Ude Ethnographic Museum. This open-air museum is one of the biggest in Russia, with over 11,000 exhibits. It will help us get an idea of the history of the land and the Buryat people.
• We head back to town for dinner, this time at restaurant Buryatia. Every night, they put on a special buryat performance.
• Walk around town to check out the cathedrals, statues and the Selenge statues
• Stop by a classic soviet era bar to quench our thirst reasonably. We’re taking an early train tomorrow!
• Overnight at our hotel

Tuesday 16th July – Train/Irkutsk

• Early morning check-out as we board train 069Я to Irkutsk. Along the way, we will pass some of Russia’s most magnificent sceneries. If you wanted to see the best of the transsiberian railway without actually doing the whole ride, this is it!
• Arrival in Irkutsk at 16:20 local time.
• Walking Tour of the 130^th Quarter, we go to churches and monasteries, the planetarium and public observatory, the Eksperimentary Museum of Science, the ‘Window to Asia’ exhibition and the House of Folk Arts, all built to celebrate Irkutsk’s 350^th anniversary
• Head out for dinner at Rassolnik, a restaurant serving local recipes in a nostalgic soviet décor and drinks to find out what goes for a night out in Russia’s Far East!
• Overnight in Irkutsk

^{Wednesday 17th} July – Listvyanka

• Breakfast at the Hotel
• We drive to the nearby village of Listvyanka to have our first look at Baikal Lake.
• Drive out to Listvyanka village at Lake Baikal and check out the fish market and then scour the souvenirs market for Soviet kitsch. We get the opportunity to swim in the lake.
• Picnic using local produces and Baikal, a local vodka famed all around Russia.
• Visit Baikal Museum where huge aquariums are refilled with water from the lake and head on to the Under the Open Sky Museum
• Drive back to Irkutsk
• Dinner at a Nomad Restaurant. Those of us who were in Mongolia previously will reminisce on the taste of that wild land.
• Evening walk around town, as this is a YPT tour, we’ll make our compulsory visit to a statue of Lenin
• Overnight in Irkutsk

^{Thursday 18th} July – Olkhon Island

• Early breakfast in the hotel
• Depart for Olkhon Island, one of the largest lake islands in the world. It’s a 5-6 hour journey by bus and ferry but the scenery we pass through means it feels like a short trip!
• Check in to our accommodation on the island
• Lunch at the hotel Baikalov Ostrog styled after building built during the conquest of Siberia.
• Visit Khuzhir village, the main settlement on the island and home to mostly Buryats, the native ethnic group
• We’ll head on a trek to Burkhan Cape.
• Dinner and overnight in Khuzhir

Friday 19th July – Olkhon Island

• Head out after breakfast up to the northernmost point of the island – Khoboy using 4X4 to get there off-road!
• We enjoy a traditional Buryat lunch cooked on an open fire of barbecued slated fish and ukha – traditional fisherman’s soup
• We stop by Uzury a quaint and pleasant hamlet isolated from the rest of the world to understand how people live around here.
• Head back to Khuzir and relax in a banya bath house (optional extra)
• Dinner and overnight in Khuzir, we’ll keep warm with the help of an old friend – vodka!

Saturday 20th July – Olkhon Island

• Today, we’ll head to the southern part of Olkhon for most of the day. We will first take a boat to island Ogoy.
• We will be Island Hopping around the Islet of the Small Sea.
• We finally reach Ogoy Island where the stupa of enlightenment, a holy site for the Buddhist Buryat, can be found.
• It is hard to believe that we are still in the middle of a lake, as we will pass through steppes, sandy beaches and taiga.
• We make our way to Khuzhir, stopping on the way in many of the abandoned villages, including Peschanaya, that used to form Stalin’s Fish gulags. While its history has been darkened, it remains a place of serene beauty.

Sunday 21st July -Olkhon/Irkutsk

• Breakfast at the hotel
• Today, we have to cross all the way back to Irkutsk by bus, but the road ahead of us is certainly one of the most beautiful in the world.
• Arrival in Irkutsk in the evening.
• Dinner in the 130^th Quarter followed by a pub crawl of the many bars in the surroundings. After all, we have to celebrate our last day!

Monday 22nd July

• Breakfast in the hotel and end of tour
• End of tour for those of us who don’t continue on the Moscow to Pyongyang Tour! Connections by train and plane can be arranged by YPT.

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