AN OVERLAND WINTER EXPEDITION ACROSS MONGOLIA’S FROZEN LAKES AND STEPPES
Mongolia in deep winter is the country with nothing in the way. The steppe runs white to every horizon, the rivers have stopped moving, and the sky the Mongolians call eternal blue does not cloud for days. You drive the second-largest landlocked country on earth across twelve days: snow-covered dirt, iced tarmac, a lake frozen a metre thick, from the capital to the foot of the Altai. Along the way you meet the people who have never left: nomads who winter the steppe as their ancestors did, and who know how to live where the cold would end most of us. And you do it in a coterie of twelve, chosen carefully, from different corners of the world, who chose the same road you did.
Mongolia is where Nomadic Road began. Winter is when it is most itself.
What This Journey Holds
Max -7°C l Min -25°C
Toyota Land Cruiser 200 or similar
Frozen lake, open steppe, dirt roads and tarmac
EXPEDITION DIFFICULTY
Two kinds of expedition. The terrain, the weather and the altitude decide which.
Tough & Challenging: The country sets the pace and the plan bends to it.
– Long driving days, with journey times the road decides
– Trails that ask something of you
– Weather that can turn, and altitude that slows everything down
– Breakdowns, fixed on the road
– Basic stays, with little around them, and shared facilities at camp
Moderate & Comfortable: The same country, an easier line through it.
– Steadier days, journey times that hold
– More road under the wheels
– Beds with walls and doors
– Amenities within reach
Neither is the soft version. The difference is how much the country is allowed to decide.
MAX GROUP SIZE
Small groups, always. Twelve at most on a Signature expedition, fourteen on a Classic.
– Small enough to move as one convoy
– A camp that fits around one fire
– No one becomes a passenger in their own expedition
– Many join solo. No one finishes that way.
Choose Your Edition
William
Head of Mongolia Operations
Seventeen years in the air with Emirates, then the open road. British-born and Sweden-based, William brought a career in global logistics to Nomadic Road and now leads every Mongolia expedition, winter and summer, from the frozen lakes to the Gobi. Precision on the ground, and a long appetite for the far end of the map.
William
Head of Mongolia Operations
Seventeen years in the air with Emirates, then the open road. British-born and Sweden-based, William brought a career in global logistics to Nomadic Road and now leads every Mongolia expedition, winter and summer, from the frozen lakes to the Gobi. Precision on the ground, and a long appetite for the far end of the map.
Prices are per person, in US dollars, and exclude your international flights. Dates and prices are
set in good faith, and two things beyond our control can move them: a domestic flight schedule
that changes can shift the dates by a day, and a sharp move in fuel prices can change the price. If
either happens after you book, we tell you first, and why.
This ground, your dates, your circle? That’s Privé →
Nothing Discovered Later
The Drive
A Toyota Land Cruiser 200 on winter tyres, warm before you are, and what it is asked to cross: iced tarmac, dirt under snow, frozen rivers, and a frozen lake you drive across. Your seat, your line, every day.
The Landscape
A steppe with no edges. Mountains that keep their snow until May. A lake frozen a metre thick, under a sky that stays blue through the lot.
The Nights
Hotels in the towns, heated log cabins where there are no hotels, spaced through the route so the long days end well. A few of the cabins are short on creature comforts. None of them are short on warmth.
The Table
Hot breakfasts before the cold cars, packed lunches on the road, and dinners the field chef has ready when the convoy pulls in, wherever that night happens to be.
The Culture
Nomads who winter this steppe as their ancestors did, Kazakh tribes who hunt with golden eagles, shamans in the north, and a way of life the winter does not change.
Where You’re Headed
Your Journey, in Movements
70% of every Signature expedition is planned to the hour. What follows is the seventy. The thirty, the road decides.
The Beginning · The Capital and the Old Empire
The coldest capital on earth empties behind you within the hour. The first movement runs west past Hustai, where the world’s last wild horses graze the snow, to Kharkhorin: the seat of the Mongol empire, and the monastery that outlived it.
North · Into the Mountains
The tarmac gives out and the snow-covered dirt takes over. The route climbs north through the Khangai, along frozen rivers you can hear cracking at night, into the taiga where Mongolia starts to look like Siberia.
The Frozen Lake
Yes, you drive on the lake. Khövsgöl, the younger sister of Lake Baikal, freezes a metre thick from shore to shore, and for a day the route runs across it: blue-black ice where the wind has cleared the snow, the far shore for a horizon, your engine the only sound. It sounds impossible until the morning you do it. Then it feels like somewhere else entirely.
The Central Mongolian Steppe
Back down onto the open steppe, snow in patches and bare ground between, the sky doing the rest. Long, easy days along frozen rivers, log cabins at night, and the quiet that settles over a convoy when there is nothing left to say.
The Altai and the Eagle Hunters
The far west belongs to the Kazakh tribes, chroniclers of this ground, who have read it for centuries with golden eagles on their arms. Two days at the foot of the Altai: a village of eagle hunters, and the farewell to the countryside, with the farewell dinner in Ulgii.
The End · The Flight Back to the Capital
A flight back over everything you drove, and a day in Ulaanbaatar that is yours. It is also a buffer: if the domestic flight moves, it moves without touching your flight home the next morning.
The People Who Travel With You
Head of Mongolia Operations. First into every crossing, and the last one to call it a day.
William
Head of Mongolia Operations
Seventeen years in the air with Emirates, then the open road. British-born and Sweden-based, William brought a career in global logistics to Nomadic Road and now leads every Mongolia expedition, winter and summer, from the frozen lakes to the Gobi. Precision on the ground, and a long appetite for the far end of the map.
Rides with the convoy, camera up. Films what happens, not what’s staged, so it comes home with you.
Filmmaker - Cold steppes
Filmmaker
Rides with the convoy, camera up. Films what happens, not what’s staged, so it comes home with you.
Behind the convoy with the tools and the backup vehicles. What breaks on the road gets fixed on the road.
Mechanics - Cold steppes
Mechanics
Behind the convoy with the tools and the backup vehicles. What breaks on the road gets fixed on the road.
Wherever the route sleeps in the wild: cooking before you wake, and hot food in the middle of nowhere.
Field chef - Cold steppes
Field chef
Wherever the route sleeps in the wild: cooking before you wake, and hot food in the middle of nowhere.
Wherever the route sleeps in the wild: the camp raised before you arrive, beds made, and the fire already lit.
Hospitality crew - Cold steppes
Hospitality crew
Wherever the route sleeps in the wild: the camp raised before you arrive, beds made, and the fire already lit.
What to expect
Where you’ll Drive
What you’ll Drive
What you’ll See
Where you’ll Stay
On this journey, you'll get to experience what it feels like to drive across Mongolia during their extreme winters. Imagine drifting across a frozen lake.
Unscripted Stories
