Kharkhorin
A steppe town on the Orkhon where Ögedei kept the Mongol capital, and where a monastery was later built from its stones.
- Arrival
- Chinggis Khaan International · UBN
- To the town
- 340 to 360 km by road from Ulaanbaatar
- Private jets
- UBN, about 300 km away
- Best time
- June to August
The city
Karakorum, then Erdene Zuu.
For a short spell in the thirteenth century this corner of the upper Orkhon valley was the capital of the Mongol Empire. Little of Karakorum stands now. In 1585 Abtai Sain Khan had Erdene Zuu Monastery raised beside the ruins, using their stones, and planned its outer wall as a rosary of 108 stupas. The purge of 1939 left three small temples and that wall; lamas came back after 1990, and the monastery is a working one again as well as a museum.
The town of some 15,000 people sits inside the Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape, a World Heritage site of more than 120,000 hectares. Summer is short. Highs reach 20 or 21 °C from June to August, July brings most of the year’s rain, and by November the days are below freezing.
- Erdene Zuu The walled monastery of 1585, its temples kept as a museum and in use again by the lamas.
- Khöshöö Tsaidam Some 46 km east, the eighth-century Turkic memorials to Bilge Khan and Kul Tigin, first read in 1893.
- Tövkhön hermitage A retreat on a hill at 2,600 metres above the valley, almost wiped out in the Soviet period.
Arriving
Land in the capital, drive west.
Chinggis Khaan International, south of Ulaanbaatar, is the way in. From there the road to Kharkhorin runs west across the steppe for 340 to 360 km, depending on whose figure you take.
- Beijing 2 h 05
- Almaty 3 h 00
- Bangkok 5 h 10
- Baku 5 h 45
- Nice 9 h 20 long-range jet
When to go
June to August.
Semi-arid and cold for most of the year: January highs sit around minus 12 °C. The warm window runs from June to August, at 20 or 21 °C by day, with July the wettest month at 94 mm.
- -12° J 1
- -9° F 2
- 0° M 4
- 9° A 11
- 17° M 26
- 21° J 58
- 21° J 94
- 20° A 77
- 16° S 28
- 8° O 10
- -2° N 4
- -10° D 2
Elsewhere in Mongolia
More reasons to come.
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