Visited this site in July 2025 (exactly on the day when it was inscribed). For a proper visit decided to go for the original paintings. The number of visitors to the originals is limited to 10 per months. The price is 8,600 Roubles or approximately 90 Euro. In order to book such visit for a summer weekend I started to call to the director general of Shulgan-Tash starting from February and somehow finally managed to reserve 4 people as we went in a mini-group.

The visit to cave requires 380-km driving though scenic forest landscapes and rare villages from the regional center Ufa. I read reports about awful road, but at the time of research the whole road was in very good state (probable with the view of heritage status).

There is a big brand-new museum complex in situ, access to the cave requires something like 2 kilometers of walking along the river with some information panels on the road. Site guards generously provided us boots for a small tip, and these were extremely helpful due to wet mud inside the cave (the temperature is +7 inside). 99% of visitors can only see the copies of paintings located soon after the entrance. In order to visit the originals the guide takes the key and flashlight and opens the steel gate deeper inside the cave.

The paintings were only discovered in 1959 and are located in two halls (floors). There are approximately 200 paintings which are 16,000-20,000 years old. Primitive pigment applications without clear outlines, represents the majority (66%) of documented images. 24% - various simple symbols (like trapezoids and triangles). Only 10% represent zoomorphic and anthropomorphic depictions. Most frequent are mammoths, all but one facing leftward. Horses represent the second most common category. There are also two bisons, two woolly rhinoceroses and famous camel discovered only in 2017 – the oldest known depiction of camel globally. The paintings are quite visible, as they were cleaned from calcite deposits and the water seepage itself is not causing damage to the paints.

To summarize – very interesting site, visiting the originals is expensive and difficult to arrange – but still possible.

Since I seem to be the only one in the community who has visited the Xiongnu elite burial sites, and since the site may be added to the list this year, I think it is worth writing a short review. Let's start with the fact that to truly appreciate the site, you first need to visit the Genghis Khan National Museum in Ulaanbaatar. The entire second floor is occupied by artefacts from the Asian Hun/Hunnu/Xiongnu Empire, most of which are grave finds discovered at sites nominated for World Heritage status this year. The museum is brand new, and practically everything from the historical collections of Mongolia's better museums has been gathered here. The centrepiece of the exhibition is Tomb 1 of the Gol Mod II cemetery, which was most likely the burial place of a Hun king. The reconstruction of the "inverted pyramid" is truly spectacular.

Like most Hunnu tombs, this one was looted as well. (According to the Chinese source "Han Shu," during the reign of Emperor Zhao, the Wuhuan people grew stronger and looted the burial mound of the Hun king in revenge. The Huns were enraged by this, marched eastward, and destroyed the Wuhuan. There may be some truth to this story, as no unplundered elite Hunnu tomb has yet been found in Mongolia. After the Hunnu era, the leaders of the nomadic peoples of the Migration Period began to be buried in hidden tombs in Mongolia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe as a defence against tomb raiding, and these tombs are very rarely discovered, only accidentally. The robbers were clearly only interested in precious metals and weapons, so only the less valuable grave goods usually remained in the so-called stepped tombs. However, the royal tomb of Gol Mod 2 was so large and deep that the robbers "forgot" a significant amount of gold and silver treasure, mainly horse tack. At the bottom of the tomb, 21 meters deep, lay a 25-30 cm thick wooden burial chamber. During the excavation of the broken coffin, part of the buried skull and armour decorated with gold plates were found. Next to it were traces of a large sacrificial fire, preserved by a meter-thick layer of charcoal. On top of this layer of charcoal lay 16–17 carriages used by the lord buried here, which had been burned. This is evidenced by the preserved bronze and iron remains of the carriages. A lacquered wooden carriage, presumably a burial gift from the Chinese Han emperors, was buried intact. A reconstruction of this carriage is on display in the museum today. Above this layer, but still 16 meters below the surface of the earth, archaeologists discovered the skulls and leg bones of 30 horses and 5-6 sheep or goats in the northern part of the burial mound. This partial horse-and-sheep burial was most certainly the remains of the sacrificial meal of the tor. The robbers broke into the burial niche on the southeast side, which then collapsed completely under the weight of the earth above it. However, it was important to determine the location of the wooden niche hiding the coffin. The expedition found the remains of the completely destroyed coffin and the sacrificial objects, including the glazed pottery. The robbers also removed the gold decorations from the coffin and took almost everything from it. The deceased's personal items: clay and bronze vessels, cauldrons, bronze bowls, and a bronze sacrificial teapot. However, they remained in their place in the beam niche. Large clay pots, glass and jade cups were found on the north side of the niche. Horse tack with gold, silver, and bronze fittings was found on the east wall, and archaeologists also discovered a uniquely beautiful carved jade mirror here. It is quite possible that the robbers left all these treasures behind in their panic to escape from the deep grave built into the sandy soil, which was collapsing on top of them. Well over a hundred gold and silver fittings were recovered from the grave. The most famous and beautiful of these is a pair of horse harness decorations adorned with gold and precious stones. The ears, feathers, and joints of the dragons are embellished with quartz crystal and sapphire inlays. The Mongolian name for this mythical creature with special powers is "Bers." Among the gilded silver horse harness fittings were two pairs, one decorated with a unicorn stone goat and the other with a unicorn antelope species living in Mongolia.

All of these are now beautifully displayed in the museum, giving us an idea of how much richer, more developed, and more organised the Hunnu Empire actually was than we had previously thought. However, according to the World Heritage Convention, these movable treasures are not actually part of the nomination, even though they are the ones that best convey its outstanding universal value and allow us to appreciate it.

But what can we see at the site? Not much, and it is not easy to get there.

Of the many elements, we targeted Gol Mod II, where the above treasures were found and which is the most spectacular and significant cemetery. To reach it, you definitely need an off-road vehicle and a local guide who knows exactly where to go. The asphalt road ends shortly after Tsetserleg, the county seat, and from there you leave the beaten track and enter the wilderness. Not only are there no road signs, but there is hardly any road at all. After driving for two hours in the middle of nowhere—amidst beautiful scenery, by the way—we began to feel that perhaps our drivers had also gotten lost and had no idea where to go. But that was not the case; they were following a more or less well-trodden path with a definite goal in mind. However, this trail suddenly ended on a sandy hilltop – clearly not naturally; someone had blocked it.

We tried for a while to break through the forest with the UAZs, but they got stuck among the trees. They said, never mind, there is a longer but more comfortable road, let's take that. (I would have gone there first, but they clearly enjoyed the rodeo riding with the UAZs over the hills and valleys.) So we went back to the foot of the hills, to the river valley, and looked for a nomadic family who had pitched their yurt there to ask them where we could cross the river. Then, following their directions, we crossed the water with the UAZs. Shortly after, the graves appeared in the forest. The burial sites are visible on the surface; their external structure consists of a (usually rectangular) platform and a ramp leading to it. The total length of the graves (including the ramp and platform) varies between 8 and 83 meters, while the orientation of the graves is northwest-north, with the graves generally facing the bottom of a gentle slope and the stream. During the survey, approximately 250 small circular "satellite graves" were also identified and mapped, usually arranged in a curve on the eastern or western side of the largest ramp graves. The third category of graves consists of approximately 85 large, circular and seemingly unrelated graves with a maximum diameter of 28.3 meters.

At first glance, they did not seem particularly impressive, though some were undoubtedly large. We were walking around one of the larger graves—we had gotten out of the car about three minutes earlier—when we noticed a silver Lexus on the other side of the grave, from which a younger couple and an older man got out. At first, they looked at us with some suspicion. Then they struck up a conversation with our Mongolian guides, asking who we were and what we were doing there.

And then came the surprise: it turned out that the older gentleman was not just anyone. He was Professor Erdenbaatar, the most revered personality of international Hunnu research, who discovered the Gol Mod 2 cemetery and, as it turned out, was still excavating there. When we told him that we not only knew his name but had also read some of his works, he saw that we were genuinely interested in the subject and softened his stance. He offered to give us a personal tour of the graves. So, for the next two hours or so, we listened to him as we walked among the graves, and he showed us his book, which he had brought with him, to show us where and when he had found what. It was incredibly interesting.

We bought a copy of the bilingual publication (Mongolian-English) and thanked him for the excellent tour with a bottle of Hungarian pálinka. The Professor was visibly pleased – he said that he knew and loved Hungarian pálinka, as he had worked a lot with Hungarian colleagues, and our ambassador had also visited the excavation site several times.

We accompanied him to his yurt, where he lives during the excavation season. Standing next to him was the bobcat that had been used to block the shorter route. He told us that he had personally blocked the road because he could see the longer route from his yurt, allowing him to check who was coming and going from the graves. Grave robbers were not only a problem in ancient times – even today, it is widely believed that gold can be found in old graves, so there have been cases of people trying to dig up graves in the hope of finding gold. We said goodbye and continued on for a few dozen kilometres to the Deer Stones. We camped there. There is no infrastructure whatsoever in the area beyond Tsetserleg—no lodging, shops, gas stations, restaurants, etc.—so our only option was to spend the night in our own tents.

Mongolia aims to nominate the burial sites of the Hunnu elite by 2026. To be honest, there is no doubt that they have outstanding universal value. The Huns undoubtedly transformed the world as the first steppe people to travel from one end of the world to the other, from Central Mongolia to Catalaunum, on horseback in barely a century and a half. However, I find it rather doubtful that even Gol Mod 2 is suitable for World Heritage status in its current form. (The other cemeteries are even less spectacular.) It is not developed in any way, there are no signs, and there is not even a road leading to it. The site is completely unprepared to receive tourists—and will remain so for years, perhaps decades. This, of course, makes it more adventurous and rustic, and gives everyone who finally ventures here a sense of discovery, but I doubt that this could be validated in the management plan that must be formally submitted.