The Gobi & Eastern Mongolia

The Gobi preserves one of the world's richest records of dinosaurs. American expeditions led by Roy Chapman Andrews in the 1920s found nests of eggs at Bayanzag, and later Polish–Mongolian teams uncovered the Nemegt basin's giant skeletons and the famous "fighting dinosaurs", a Velociraptor locked with a Protoceratops. People have lived here since the Stone Age, and the desert was crossed for centuries by caravans between the steppe and China.

The north-east is the cradle of the Mongols. Temüjin is said to have been born near the Onon river in the Khentii mountains, and he offered worship on Burkhan Khaldun and declared it the country's most sacred mountain. The chronicle itself is said to have been completed at Khödöö Aral on the Kherlen. Before the empire, the eastern steppe lay within the Khitan Liao state, which ruled the Mongolian plateau.

In the 19th century the lama-poet Danzanravjaa founded Khamaryn Khiid near Sainshand and staged plays with his own touring troupe. In 1939 Soviet and Mongolian forces defeated the Japanese army at Khalkhin Gol on Dornod's eastern border, and Choir became a Soviet military base. Since the 2000s the South Gobi has been transformed by the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine and the Tavan Tolgoi coalfield.

The Gobi is camel country. The two-humped Bactrian camel provides milk, wool, meat and transport. Families live far apart around scarce wells, and hospitality to passing travellers is taken seriously. Danzanravjaa remains a local hero in Dornogovi, and his monastery, rebuilt after 1990, and the nearby "energy centre" draw visitors.

The east is Khalkha heartland, with Buryat communities in the north of Dornod and Khentii who keep their own dialect and dress. The Dariganga of Sükhbaatar descend partly from herders settled there by the Qing in the 1690s to raise the emperor's horses. Khentii holds a special place in national feeling as the land of Genghis Khan, and its provincial capital was renamed Chinggis in 2013.

Across the region, local Naadam festivals are held in each district in summer, and the sacred mountains, from Burkhan Khaldun to Shiliin Bogd, are climbed with offerings at their ovoo cairns, traditionally by men only on some peaks.

The provincial centres — Dalanzadgad, Mandalgovi, Sainshand, Choir, Bayankhongor, Baruun-Urt, Choibalsan and Chinggis — are towns of a few tens of thousands at most, with Choibalsan the largest in the east. Most people outside them herd goats, sheep, camels, horses and cattle, and goat cashmere is the main source of cash.

The South Gobi's mining boom has changed Ömnögovi: Oyu Tolgoi employs thousands, long convoys of coal trucks and a new rail line carry coal to the Chinese border, and the towns have grown. Debates over water use, dust, grazing land and how mining revenue is shared are constant. Zamyn-Üüd, facing Erenhot across the border, lives from rail freight and trade with China.

In the east, life follows the herding calendar on grasslands that remain among the largest intact steppes on Earth. Drought, dzud and wildfires are the recurring threats.

Gobi herders live on camel and goat. Camel milk is drunk fresh or fermented into khoormog, a sparkling, sour drink, and goat meat is the feast dish, often as boodog — a whole goat cooked from inside with hot stones packed into the carcass and the skin sealed. Meat is cut into strips and air-dried as borts for winter.

On the eastern steppe, cattle and sheep give milk for the usual white foods — öröm cream, aaruul curds, tarag yoghurt — and families in Dornod and Khentii make airag in summer. Wild onion and chive gathered on the grassland add flavour to dumplings and soups.

Towns along the railway and in the mining belt have canteens serving buuz, khuushuur and tsuivan to drivers and workers, and Chinese goods and snacks are common near the border.

In Ömnögovi, Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park holds the Khongoryn Els dunes, the ice-filled Yolyn Am gorge and the Gurvan Saikhan ridges. The red Flaming Cliffs of Bayanzag are also in Ömnögovi, and the Khermen Tsav canyons lie to the west in Bayankhongor. Dundgovi has the granite outcrops of Baga Gazriin Chuluu, while in Dornogovi Khamaryn Khiid stands in the desert near Sainshand. Bayankhongor offers the Shargaljuut hot springs, the salt lake Orog Nuur and the Ikh Bogd massif.

The eastern steppe of Dornod and Sükhbaatar is a land of huge skies, where herds of Mongolian gazelle migrate across the grass. Shiliin Bogd, an extinct volcano, and the dunes and lake of Dariganga are the main sights of Sükhbaatar. In Dornod, where the battle of Khalkhin Gol was fought, Choibalsan has a museum about it, Buir Lake lies on the Chinese border, and the Mongol Daguur reserve protects wetland and steppe.

The Khentii mountains rise in the north-east, with Burkhan Khaldun inside the Khan Khentii Strictly Protected Area. At Dadal, Deluun Boldog is marked as Genghis Khan's birthplace, among forests and lakes on the Onon.