No thread yet for this vast yet sparse country, so let's open one! 🇲🇳

I am just coming extremely late (as usual) to express also here my appreciation to @Michael Ayers for his recent reviews of Orkhon Valley and Burkhan Khaldun, which I enjoyed very much. I wish you the best for the continuation of your trips!

Maybe I might think of adding one about Orkhon. Since I am at that, a question about boundaries: I cannot decide from the very coarse map on UNESCO's site if the "Khul-Tegin museum", officially Хөшөө Цайдам мүзэй (khöshöö Tsaidam müzei, which I guess means "stelae's valley/salty marsh museum") north of Kharkhorin, of which I find few sites (touristic info [Mongolian], Wikipedia) is still in the core zone (from a mere cultural point of view, I think there would be no doubts). It is here on the map: too up north? But it's still in the district of Khashaat.

And with this, I imagine this thread in the future frequented proportionately to how many travellers traverse those remote steppes and valleys :-)

Hi Astraftis,

Thanks for your kind words about my reviews, I am happy that you found them to be helpful!

Looking at the "coarse" unesco map you linked, I would say, yes, the place you are interested in is definitely in the core zone. It is the area outlined in green at the northeast edge of the zone. The outlines make the first word of the text label hard to read, but the second word is "хошоо", or "khoshoo", which is part of the Mongolian name for the Orkhon Inscriptions location. I hope that helps.

Mongolia is a beautiful country!

Hey, good find! Giving it a better look, that area is labeled as Цайдмын хөшөө Tsaidmiin khöshöö 'the marsh's monument/stele', or something similar. So it is nearly the exact thing as хөшөө цайдам, only with цайдам in the genitive. OK. I was confused by the scale of the map... So the names of the towns do not actually indicate the "towns", but the districts, and the smaller, right river is the "old Orkhon" (the tag хөгшин Орхон is barely visible). Now, I guess that Khar Balgas is the bigger green polygon in the West!

PS: is it strange for a map to be "coarse"? :-)

Not for UNESCO, all of their maps seem that way to me! ;-)