Хөвсгөл : Монголын домогт "Хөх сувд"

A 9 days tour all around Khuvsgul lake !

Khuvsgul is a province of Mongolia, located in the extreme north of the country. It bears the name of the largest and deepest lake in the country, known by its former inhabitants as “the lake of blue water,” later popularized by Russians as “Kossogol.”

Much more than in other aïmags, this region maintains local traditions. Several ethnic groups live there, the best known of which are the Durkha, the Buriat, and of course the Darkhad people, better-known as Tsaatan or reindeer herders.

Today, the lake is also called the “blue pearl of Mongolia” because of its beauty and the color of its water.

The area is a national park that is filled with various fauna and flora, many of which are endemic.

Many varieties of birds live there, mainly migratory birds which come to nest there in the summer.

The lake is surrounded by the Khodiral Saridag mountains, which are composed of approximately ten extinct volcanoes.

Due to its lake, Khövsgöl is one of the rare areas in Mongolia where people eat fish.

The lake is surrounded by several peaks, reaching 3,500m high where you can find snow and fields of ice year-round.

This wild place is not well-known and many summits haven’t yet been explored.

In March, the ice is incredibly pure, completely transparent, with a bluish color near the coast, greenish where the sandy bottom is still visible, or black when it comes to the deepest part of the lake. Mars is also a transitional period between winter and spring, the weather can change very quickly and winds can sweep the lake in violent gusts.

April is a warmer month, with less wind, you can feel the sun warming your back. The ice moves more than in March and reveals some areas of water that attract many different birds, swan, ducks and at the end of April, seagulls and cormorants.

To answer to the most popular question: “which is the best month to do this trip?”

It’s impossible for me to say, as I enjoy all of them!

The lake: Your adventure playground

135 kilometers long, around 30 to 37 kilometers wide, some 260m deep in the middle, and more than 60 rivers descending from mountains & hills all join in the lake, to create one of the largest pure water reservoirs in the world.

The lake also pours into the Eg river, and then into Selenge, to finish in Lake Baikal, hence its nickname as the “Baikal’s younger brother.”

But in Mongolia, Khuvsgul is more than a lake, more than the Blue Pearl— Khuvsgul is a legend.

Crossing this enormous stretch of ice is not particularly easy…