Travel to Gobi Desert

Forget everything you think you know about deserts. The Gobi—covering 1.3 million square kilometers across Mongolia and northern China—is not a sea of sand but a mosaic of gravel plains, rocky outcrops, mountain ranges, and hidden oases. Mongolians recognize 33 distinct types of Gobi, and true sand dunes cover only 3-5% of this vast territory. At elevations averaging 1,000 to 1,500 meters, this is also the world’s coldest desert, where temperatures plunge to minus 40°C in winter and soar above 40°C in summer.

The Gobi’s heart is protected within Gobi Gurvan Saikhan National Park—Mongolia’s largest at 27,000 square kilometers. Named for the ‘Three Beauties’ mountain ranges that rise dramatically from the desert floor, the park encompasses singing sand dunes, ice-filled canyons, and fossil-rich cliffs. This is a landscape shaped by the same tectonic forces that created the Himalayas, where 80 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed grasslands and marshes that have since turned to stone and sand.

In 1922, American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews led a caravan of camels and automobiles into the Gobi, searching for evidence of early humans. What he found changed paleontology forever. At a site his team named the Flaming Cliffs—for the way the red sandstone glowed at sunset—Andrews discovered the first scientifically recognized dinosaur eggs, proving these ancient creatures reproduced like modern birds and reptiles. The expedition also unearthed Velociraptor, Protoceratops, and Oviraptor, transforming our understanding of Cretaceous life.

Today, the Gobi remains one of the world’s richest dinosaur graveyards. The dry climate and soft sediments have preserved complete skeletons in positions that capture moments frozen 70-80 million years ago—including the famous ‘Fighting Dinosaurs’ fossil showing a Velociraptor locked in combat with a Protoceratops. At the Flaming Cliffs, visitors still find bone fragments eroding from the ancient sediments, though removing fossils without permits is strictly prohibited. The region’s paleontological significance continues to draw researchers from around the world.

The two-humped Bactrian camel has defined life in the Gobi for over 4,000 years. Domesticated around 2500 BCE, these remarkable animals can carry 200 kilograms across trackless desert, survive weeks without water, and endure temperature swings from minus 40°C to plus 50°C. Mongolia’s 400,000 Bactrian camels provide nomadic herders with transportation, wool for textiles, and milk for sustenance. Each March, the Thousand Camel Festival celebrates this partnership, with camel races, polo matches, and beauty pageants drawing herders from across the region.

In the Gobi’s remote western reaches survives one of earth’s rarest mammals: the Mazaalai, or Gobi bear. Fewer than 40 of these small brown bears remain—the only bears on the planet adapted to desert life. They survive on wild rhubarb, berries, and insects around scattered oases in the Great Gobi Strictly Protected Area. Sharing this harsh habitat are wild Bactrian camels (a separate species from their domestic cousins, with only 950 remaining), snow leopards, ibex, and Mongolian wild ass—a community of survivors in one of earth’s most extreme environments.