Learn Mongolia before you go

10 phrases to learn

In Mongolian (written in Cyrillic). Capital letters show the stressed part. Tap the heart to practise a phrase later.

At the table

• A guest is always offered milk tea first. Take the bowl with your right hand, or with both hands, and it is polite to support your right elbow with your left hand.
• Try at least a little of everything you are offered, even a small bite or a sip. Refusing food outright is impolite.
• The stove or hearth in the middle of the ger is sacred. Never throw rubbish into the fire.
• Do not point the soles of your feet towards the hearth or the family altar at the back of the ger.
• When khorkhog is served, the hot, greasy stones are passed round from hand to hand before the meal. Take one when it reaches you, then pass it on.
• Older men may offer you a small snuff bottle. Take it with your right hand, sniff the stopper or the bottle, and hand it back with your right hand.

Local tips

Dishes to try

• Buuz (бууз): Steamed dumplings filled with minced mutton or beef, onion and garlic, pleated by hand and left with a small opening at the top. They are the traditional dish eaten at home during Tsagaan Sar, the Lunar New Year, when relatives visit one another.
• Khuushuur (хуушуур): A flat pastry filled with minced mutton or beef, onion and garlic, folded into a half-moon and fried until golden. Khuushuur is the food of the Naadam festival in July, when stalls near the stadium and the race tracks fry them by the thousand.
• Bansh (банш): Small dumplings filled with meat, smaller than buuz. Instead of being steamed like buuz, bansh are boiled, often in a clear mutton soup, to make a warming winter meal.
• Tsuivan (цуйван): Home-made flat noodles steamed on top of fried strips of meat with onion, carrot and cabbage, then stirred together. It is one of the most common everyday meals in Mongolian homes and cafés.
• Guriltai shul (гурилтай шөл): A simple, filling soup of mutton, noodles and a few vegetables such as potato, carrot and onion. The name means 'soup with flour', because the noodles are made from flour at home. It is a favourite in the cold months and a common roadside café meal.
• Khorkhog (хорхог): A feast dish for guests and special days. Pieces of mutton on the bone are cooked with water, vegetables and fist-sized stones heated in the fire, all sealed inside a metal milk can or pot. When the meat is ready, the hot, greasy stones are passed from hand to hand before the meal.
• Boodog (боодог): A goat or a marmot cooked from the inside: the meat is taken out through the neck, then put back into the skin with red-hot stones, and the outside is singed, today often with a blowtorch. It is prepared for special occasions and is one of the oldest ways of cooking on the steppe.
• Chanasan makh (чанасан мах): Big pieces of mutton on the bone, simply boiled in salted water and served on a platter. Each person cuts off meat with a knife, and the broth can be drunk as soup.

Cities to see

• Ulaanbaatar (capital): Sükhbaatar Square and the Government Palace, Gandan Monastery and its giant golden statue of Avalokiteshvara, The Bogd Khan's Winter Palace.
• Erdenet: The huge open-pit copper mine, Green hills and forests of northern Mongolia.
• Darkhan: The Trans-Mongolian Railway, A monument to the morin khuur, the horsehead fiddle.
• Choibalsan: The Kherlen River, The eastern steppe.
• Mörön: Gateway to Lake Khövsgöl, The Uushigiin Övör deer stones nearby.
• Khovd: Gateway to the Mongolian Altai, A mix of Mongol, Kazakh and other peoples of the west.

Landmarks and the city map are on the Mongolia trip