Between 2003 and August 2018 I did a number of riding / hiking / camping / reconnaissance trips out to the Mongolian countryside, as far as its Northern, Western and Southern borders, for up to two weeks at a time, with various “well-established” travel providers including individual and small-group custom trips with Mongolian Ways.
I return to Mongolia for its dramatic, very-lightly-populated, wide-open unfenced desert, mountain, taiga, forest and steppe landscapes and nature, and the varied and hospitable nomadic peoples out in that countryside.
I continue to go with Mongolian Ways because:
• SAFETY: out in Mongolia’s remote areas I want Safety to be Job One, and I have found Mongolian Ways’ drivers and horse wranglers to be well-experienced professionals who consistently attend to Safety without over-nannying things; we haven’t got lost out there; they provided horses suitable for the full range of riding skills in our group, and indeed well-mannered reindeer for our lighter members
• ATTITUDE: I find Mongolian Ways’ personnel to be friendly and, see them consistently going the extra mile to accommodate Clients (including bringing extra bedding on an unusually cold night, and retrieving stuff left behind by dumb Clients); they clearly go out of their way to build positive community relations out in the countryside, and to avoid offending local sensitivities (and in one case I observed, going to CONSIDERABLE lengths to patch up a gross faux pas committed by a competitor’s tour group)
• GUIDES: Mongolian Ways’ guides speak fully-functional, and in some cases eloquent, English; and were at least as knowledgeable as I needed them to be; I enjoyed their camp cooking
• COST-EFFECTIVE DELIVERY TO PROMISE: Mongolian Ways’ office takes some care over their proposals, and I would advise potential Clients to ensure that their proposal does capture what they want – and don’t want; Mongolian Ways have delivered to promise for me every time, and I consider their pricing to be fair for the services they provided
(I can compare my trips with Mongolian Ways favourably versus a “luxury” 24-person group tour to the Gobi and Far West organised through a prestigious American university which I also took in 2018; the daily rate for that trip was literally 10 times that of Mongolian Ways’ 2018 trip, but (i) in heavy rain in the far West of Mongolia, one of the Land Cruisers was literally sliding off the track and down the grassy hillside until the Clients bailed out and had the driver replaced; (ii) the American university’s ‘Tour Manager’ left half-way through the tour, and was not replaced; (iii)in a dire provincial hotel there was not one drop of water to drink or even flush the toilet, and Clients were left to go into the town on their own in the rain to buy water; (iv) during rain, the tour group and its guide spontaneously occupied a small community mosque for a considerable period overlapping with prayer time, while keeping a wedding party waiting outside, and then took photos of the wedding party against their clearly-expressed wishes; and (v) stops were scheduled in 1-1/4-hour chunks, including “shopping opportunities”.)
I have no financial interest in Mongolian Ways, and look forward to travelling with them again, soon.
