MONGOLIA'S DARK BLUE PEARL
Holding 70% of Mongolia's fresh water and ringed by taiga forest, Lake Khövsgöl is where reindeer-herding Tsaatan families and alpine wilderness meet in the country's far north.
On Mongolia's Siberian border in the far north, Lake Khövsgöl is the country's second-largest lake and its most important, holding around 70% of Mongolia's fresh water and 0.4% of the world's total. It formed roughly two million years ago in a tectonic depression, and today its water runs so clear that visibility can reach 24 metres - ideal for kayaking across the surface on a still summer morning, June to August, when temperatures sit between a comfortable 12 and 22°C.
The lake is ringed by taiga forest and the Sayan Mountains, and it's here that Mongolia's smallest indigenous group, the Tsaatan or Dukha, keep one of the world's most unusual nomadic lifestyles: herding domesticated reindeer and living in teepee-style shelters deep in the mountains northeast of the lake. Around 300 Tsaatan families remain, and visits are arranged only through community-led tourism programmes, booked four to six months ahead – a detail that says something about how protected this culture still is. Closer to the shoreline, Buryat fishing villages offer a gentler introduction to the region's ethnic diversity, and multi-day horse treks push further into the Sayan range for those with time to spare.
Khövsgöl sits a long way from anywhere else in Mongolia, which is exactly its appeal, but it pairs well with the Altai Mountains for travellers building a two-centre wilderness trip, both regions reached by internal flight via Ulaanbaatar rather than overland. For something gentler bookended around it, Ulaanbaatar itself makes a natural start or finish point before heading north. Few places in Mongolia reward the extra distance quite like this one.
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Sophie
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