Mongolia: Sleeping in a Ger During the Naadam Festival

Every July, Mongolia — the least densely populated country on Earth — gathers for Naadam: three days of wrestling, horse racing and archery that have marked the summer since the time of Genghis Khan. It is the best time to visit, and the busiest.

Ulaanbaatar's stadium hosts the grand opening and the wrestling finals, but the countryside Naadams — in towns like Kharkhorin or Murun — are smaller, freer and more intimate: you can stand at the finish line as child jockeys, some as young as five, thunder home across thirty kilometres of open steppe.

The essential Mongolia happens between the festivals: a night in a ger, the felt tent of the nomads, arranged through community-based tourism networks or any guesthouse in UB. Expect mutton, mare's milk, a wood stove at the centre of the world, and hospitality that has been refined over a thousand years of surviving the steppe.

Practical notes: book Naadam-week flights and gers months ahead, bring warm layers even in July — nights on the steppe drop to single digits — and hire a driver with a Russian van for anything beyond the capital. There are almost no roads; there is also almost nothing you will remember more.