This sacred site is one of the world’s oldest nature reserves

Where a family’s prized possessions are their cows and sheep, second only to the horses—and maybe a pair of binoculars—strength has never been in numbers. The world’s last nomads have lived in harmony off the land for thousands of years in the least densely populated country in the world, but that is changing.

“We have never been team sports players because we can’t be,” explains Dorj Usukhjargal, a Mongolian biologist.

 On the Mongolian steppe, these minimalists race the horses they honor and eat to bulk up their children who’ve become world’s top sumo wrestlers. Separated by thousands of miles across the worn-out grasslands couched between the sand dunes of the Gobi Desert and the Altai Mountains, nomadic herding families bulk up to forge on, breaking down and reassembling yurt homes they call gers, just so their free-roaming livestock don’t overgraze. They’ve been migrating long distances seasonally to protect the land since before Genghis Khan unified their tribes into the largest land empire in history in the 1200s—and his nomad friend, Tooril Khan, protected Bogd Khan Uul, which in 1778 became world's first national park, a century before Yellowstone.

“Long before global conventions and climate summits, Mongolia was practicing conservation in ways that still resonate today,” says Galbadrakh (Gala) Davaa, director for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Mongolia.

In September, I stood on the other side of the world, watching a massive flock of pigeons fly south over Bogd Khan Uul’s 1733 Buddhist temple ruins. Winter temperatures are already creeping into the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s overcrowded capital, near the growing ger district where nomadic climate refugees make up a large percentage of the city's population. A fast and furious freezing phenomenon intensifying from climate change, called dzud, has interrupted Mongolia’s deeply cultural and practical nomadic conservation practices.

“These shifts are not abstract—they are felt in the harsh winters, which have become more frequent and devastating, causing massive livestock losses and threatening the livelihoods of rural herders,” explains Davaa.

(The dangers of dzud, Mongolia’s lethal winters)

In this one-two climate punch, only in Mongolia, extreme droughts and rising summer temperatures from greenhouse gases trigger heavy winter winds, blankets of ice, and negative 50-degree weather from a weakening polar jet system. More frequent and severe dzuds in the past decade have killed off droves of Mongolia’s livestock—about 10 percent (8.1 million) in 2023-2024 alone—just before UNESCO recognized the ancient Mongol Nomad Migration as an intangible cultural heritage.

This winter, Mongolian nomads Batbayar Dashtsermaa and his wife Dejidmaa are preparing for another severe dzud. Their hay supply will run out in February, and that’s when the dzud hits hardest.

“Our animals are weaker and we’ve lost 100 already,” says Batbayar, handing me a basket of dried Mongolian curd (aaruul) that Dejidmaa fermented here inside their ger after milking the cows outside. “We had to take out a loan to buy more wheat and feed so the animals survive winter because they can’t live off the pastures alone anymore, but that means life gets harder for us. We won’t have any money left for healthcare if we get sick.”

Dejidmaa fills the wood stove with odorless cow dung that vents through the chimney out the roof hole, then reaches up to remove a photo of her daughter wedged in the wall between the ger’s orange slats and felt lining from sheep’s wool.

“She’s off at school in Ulaanbaatar and when she gets older, she can decide whether to return to become a nomad, since she knows how to do it," she explains to me through a translator—Gan-Erdene Ganbat, a Mongolian G Adventures guide who is now my friend. But, chances are, she adds, they’ll join their kids in the city in a decade, selling their animals to buy an apartment they’ll leave to them, ending their family’s ancestral nomadic heritage. 

“Out of 10 nomadic families we know, three or four have left the steppe for an easier life,” adds Batbayar.

Nomadic routes have been central to Mongolia since 3500 B.C., and some even later became part of the Silk Road, where nomads facilitated cultural and religious exchange, and safe passage. Until Mongolia’s 1911 independence from the Qing Dynasty, nomads still made up 90 percent of Mongolia. But today, nomads only represent 35 percent of the population. 

“Mongolia stands at a critical crossroads. As one of the countries most affected by climate change, it faces intensifying threats—from rising temperatures to land degradation,” says Davaa. 

Bogd Khan Uul Biosphere Reserve

In a clearing from the dense woody evergreens, along the slope of Bogd Khan Mountain, I saw why this national park was prohibited from logging and hunting in the 1200s. Bogd Khan Uul is the world’s oldest nature reserve, originally preserved by an ally of Genghis Khan named Van, or “Tooril” Khan, leader of one of five dominant Mongol tribes in the 12th and 13th centuries. Worshipping the park’s Bogd Khan Mountain, Tooril Khan banned hunting and logging in its coniferous forests. By 1778, the area was home to hundreds of monks in more than 20 temples—including the famous Manzushir Monastery ruins—and designated a protected area under the Qing Dynasty.

Even after the park’s temples were destroyed in the 1930s, locals regarded the mountain as a holy site. Finally, in 1957, the government announced the official protection of the park, increasing its safeguarding in 1974 and again in 1995. A year later, UNESCO designated the site a biosphere reserve.

Gazing out the window of a centuries-old meditation retreat filled with colorful flags and Buddhist heads that belonged to Mongolia’s last monarch, a Tibetan spiritual leader who lived here in 1911, I understood why. The "Sacred Mountain" now offers hauntingly beautiful stupas and Bronze-age nomadic petroglyphs and this remaining intact temple–once home of Mongolia’s last monarch, a Tibetan spiritual leader. Hikers climb to the 7,418-foot summit of Tsetsee Gun for breathtaking views reaching over Mongolia's sprawling nearby capital city of Ulaanbaatar and the vast Gobi Desert steppe.

Atop of the country’s tallest mountain lies temple ruins of the 18th century Mongolian government leader who was instrumental in protecting Bogd Khan Mountain, and in the valleys and winding rivers you'll find petroglyphs and inscriptions on cliffs, ancient human settlements at Zaisan Valley, and the 1653 meditation site of Zanabazar.

Make sure to visit the sacred Bodhi tree landmark historic meditation site, ancient rock art in caves of Nukhte Valley, and the astronomical observatory on Camel Cliff behind Khurel Togoot. And around the outskirts of the park, you'll find 70 seasonal nomadic herding families still tending to their livestock.

A 2024 initiative by the Mongolian government, The Nature Conservancy, herding communities, and others dedicated $189 million to protect 30 percent of Mongolia’s land and freshwater by 2030. This initiative vows to expand community-based conservation across 84 million acres for 24,000 herding households by 2040 in the face of climate change and economic challenges.

(Mongolia became a global leader in conservation by returning to its Indigenous roots)

“For Mongolians, these grasslands are more than ecological assets. They regulate water cycles, store carbon, and buffer climate extremes across Central Asia, says Davaa. “They are the backbone of nomadic heritage and a centuries-old way of life.”

Visiting Mongolia

By the end of this two-week, life-changing trip, where I herded and milked Batbayar and Dejidmaa’s cows, ate Mongolian cheese, fermented mare’s milk, and sipped a homemade vodka called arkhi, I was ready for anything.

Down endless bumpy stretches that felt like roads to nowhere, we visited many of the country’s 24 national parks beyond Bogd Khan—the Flaming Cliffs of Gobi Gurvan Saikhan National Park where the first dinosaur eggs ever were discovered, and Hustai National Park, where the last living truly wild (Przewalski's) horses came back from extinction.

Horses are so intertwined with Mongolia’s national identity, that when they die their skulls are wrapped in Buddhist scarves and placed on a mountaintop.

Along nomadic routes, we slept in visitor ger camps, which started covering the steppe when Western visitation opened up in the 1990s. Now, tourism is experiencing another boom—a record number of visitors in 2024 (808,000) and another 21.5 percent increase during the first half of 2025. After United Airlines launched the first regularly scheduled flight between the U.S. and Mongolia in May, via Tokyo, the Mongolian government announced its plan to attract two million visitors annually by 2030, with a sharp focus on American travelers.

“We saw the demand and a way to seamlessly connect by flying through Newark and Narita, Tokyo to Ulaanbaatar," says Matt Stevens, vice president of United Airlines’ International Network. “We’re seeing travelers trendsetting to find the next big thing in adventure and culture tourism, also with Greenland. They want to immerse themselves in an experience and Mongolia has one of the most incredible landscapes in the world.” 

With a Mongolian government promise to increase benefits to local communities through tourism, time will tell what it means for the future of the country's nomadic people and its natural landscape, which is now 77 percent degraded. 

Days before Batbayar and Dejidmaa pack up their cheese cloths, vats, and wood stove and break down their felt and slats to herd their animals across the arid high-plateau to their winter spot, I ask a last question and Batbayar responds that what he loved most about being a nomad is already gone. 

“The best part of this lifestyle is behind me. It was when I rode my horse to herd the animals before motorbikes were used. That’s when I felt most proud and happiest,” he says. “But in Mongolia we have a saying. As long as you follow your animals, you will always have food to eat.”

(Why Mongolia should be your next wellness escape)