Experience the best of Dalanzadgad

Dalanzadgad is the capital of the Ömnögovi province in the south of Mongolia, a small town of low buildings and a market in a landscape of open desert steppe, rocky hills and herds of goats and camels. It is the supply base for exploring the Gobi, and has an airport that links it to Ulaanbaatar.

Close by, Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park holds Yolyn Am, a narrow gorge where ice lingers well into summer, and, at its western end, the Khongoryn Els, a long chain of tall sand dunes that hum when the sand shifts. Further north-west, the red cliffs of Bayanzag, known as the Flaming Cliffs, are where American palaeontologists found the first known dinosaur eggs in the 1920s. Bactrian camels graze across the steppe.

Herding families live in white felt tents called gers and offer salted milk tea, boiled mutton, dumplings and airag, fermented mare's milk, in summer. The Gobi is a land of extremes, with hot summers and bitterly cold winters, and the months from June to September are the usual season for the dunes and gorge.