Mongolia Books

Mongolia (Country Guide)

Michael Kohn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

In the past year I have spent six months in rural Mongolia. There is not much choice of guidebooks in English and we are fortunate that Lonely Planet has put out a small book that nevertheless conveys an awful lot of really good information. My copy was in constant use. On my visits to Ulaan Baatar I found the guide to be indispensable. Practically everything worth visiting was listed and described.

For a lot of western travellers, Mongolia will be a fairly daunting experience. The book identifies potential difficulties and suggests how to minimise problems. That being said, Mongolia is a great place to visit - fascinating coutry and wonderful people.

If you are going to Mongolia, "Don't leave home without it!"

Editorial Review:

Discover Mongolia

Cling to your camel as a Gobi sandstorm sweeps past
Learn the 'three manly sports' while visiting nomad families on a Ger-to-Ger adventure
Honor the sky gods with the famous vodka dip-and-flick ritual
Stretch out your vocal cords with a throat-singing lesson in Chandmani

In This Guide:

Our intrepid author conducted 180 days' research, covered 8259km and drank 135 cups of salty milk tea
New Outdoors chapter details activities from cycling the Chinggis Khaan trail to horse trekking in the steppes

Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia

Louisa Waugh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

a great book on a radically different culture 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is a book by a woman, who goes to Mongolia, discovers how much she likes the country and then goes back to it years later, lives there for two years, then teaches in a remote village of nomads. the book is about her time spent in the village of nomads teaching them English. she describes life in the village and the people there and how it was for a foriegner, who grew up in London, to be totally surrounded by such a foreign and alien environment. very good read. i highly recommend it.

Living with nomads 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Louisa Waugh went to live in a village in western Mongolia, to teach English, where she learned more than she thought she would. She learned about religion, lush summers, dusts storms, hard winters, loneliness, fear, happiness, yummy horse meat and dealing with death. For all the information in the book it reads pretty swiftly and I finished it within a couple of days, when not working, sleeping or eating. It really is a hard book to put down and a lovely one to add to my library of Asian books. I really felt sorry for her sometimes.

Editorial Review:

A wonderfully accessible memoir of an inaccessible country: Outer Mongolia.

Mongolian: Lonely Planet Phrasebook

Alan J. K. Sanders, J. Bat-Ireedui, Lonely Planet Phrasebooks

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

THIS BOOK IS JUST PLAIN WRONG! 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I went to Mongolia twice in the past year, and I live with a Mongolian woman full time who is a well educated journalist. If one had to rely on this book, one would be in serious trouble. First off, the phrase "sain bainuu?" which is used as "hello", if you pronounced it the way this book says, you would be way off, and no one would be able to understand you. I hear the phrase every day, spoken by native Mongolians, and it sounds more like "sen benno". The book says to say "sayn baynoo". What's up with that? And then the pronunciations for the Mongolian cyrillic that it gives are not correct. So you'd be trying to read something and thinking you were smart with your little book, and when you tried to say it, you'd never be right. So as far as translating a few basic, written words, this book could be helpful. But don't attempt to pronounce anything the way they have it written. I can't believe this is the "best" book out there on this subject! They need to rewrite the pronunciation section with the supervision of an actual Mongolian speaker!

Editorial Review:

As the traveler at a neighboring table struggles with the menu, you're glad you came equipped with your phrasebook. Not only did you order your meal with ease, you're also sure of what's coming. You smile as the waiter brings your dish and say en minii zakhialsan khool bish... Travel with confidence, using language as your guide.

Our phrasebooks give you a comprehensive mix of practical and social words and phrases in more than 120 languages. Chat with the locals and discover their culture - a guaranteed way to enrich your travel experience.

Walking the Gobi: 1,600 Mile-trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair

Helen Thayer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

By the bestselling author of Polar Dream (more than 40,000 copies sold) At the age of 63, Helen Thayer fulfilled her lifelong dream of crossing Mongolia's Gobi Desert. Accompanied by her 74-year-old husband Bill and two camels, Tom and Jerry, Thayer walked 1600 miles in 126-degree temperatures, battling fierce sandstorms, dehydration, dangerous drug smugglers, and ubiquitous scorpions. For more than 60 days Helen struggled to keep moving through this inhospitable terrain despite a severe leg injury. Without sponsors, a support team, or radio contact, hers is a journey of pure discovery and adventure.

Walking the Gobi takes readers on a trip through a little-known landscape and introduces them to the culture of the nomadic people whose ancestors have eked out an existence in the Gobi for thousands of years. Thayer's respect and admiration for the culture of Gobi and her gentle weaving of natural history shine throughout this remarkable story. The author proves that Baby Boomers don't have to take life lying down-their adventures have just begun.

Eagle Dreams: Searching for Legends in Wild Mongolia

Stephen J. Bodio

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In praise of books by the author: "Bodio writes like Pavarotti sings. He is a master." --Tony Hillerman (for Querencia)

"Stephen Bodio has written an unpretentious yet thrilling book about falconry, one of man's oldest and most mysterious alliances in the natural world; and he takes us afield under the wild skies of birds of prey." --Thomas McGuane (for A Rage for Falcons)

"Fascinating, funny, sad, beautiful . . . Aloft is full of wonderful images and energy." --Annie Proulx


When Stephen Bodio was a young boy in the early 50's he saw an image in National Geographic which became forever etched in his mind: it was a photograph of a Kazakh nomad, dressed in a long coat and wearing a fur hat, holding a huge tame eagle on his fist. And a life-long fascination with Central Asia was born.
Mongolia, a vast country located between Siberia and China and little known to outsiders, was long under Soviet domination and inaccessible to westerners. When it became independent in 1990 Bodio began planning a pilgrimage to see if the eagle hunters of "The Picture" had survived. A life-long falconer himself, he longed to visit the birth place of falconry and observe the traditions that had survived intact through the ages. His fantasy was realized when he traveled independently twice to the westernmost region of Mongolia and spent months with the people and birds of his dreams. The ancient rituals of hunting with eagles are fascinating and the remarkable relationship these nomadic people have with their birds of prey is thrilling. With vivid prose and humor, Bodio gives life to his dreams and the people, landscapes, and animals of Mongolia that have become part of his soul.

Bones of the Master: A Journey to Secret Mongolia

George Crane

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Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Buddhism -> Zen
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the steady hands of poet George Crane, previously unknown Zen master Tsung Tsai comes off as truly extraordinary. A "poet, philosopher, house builder, scientist, doctor, and when necessary, kung fu ass-kicker," Tsung Tsai would still be wandering about anonymously if it were not, Crane says, for the need of financing provided by an advance on this book. The last of the monks from his Chinese monastery, Tsung Tsai felt he had to return one last time to find and honor his master's bones and rekindle his tradition. Crane recounts their joint adventure, opening with Tsung Tsai's harrowing decades-earlier escape from newly communist China, walking from Inner Mongolia to Hong Kong through a war-torn, famine-struck, psychotic land, nearly starving along the way. Crane, a self-styled hedonist ne'er-do-well, who says that meditation makes him nauseous, sets the stage for an entrancing buddy story back to China with this highly disciplined but carefree Zen master. As their mutual affection grows, Crane absorbs Tsung Tsai's spare but demanding philosophy, which sustains them through the base poverty of northern China, a life-threatening 18-hour climb up and down a treacherous mountain, and a confrontation with a master of black magic. A page-turner and an eye-opener, Bones of the Master is worth every penny of that advance. --Brian Bruya

Mongolia Map by ITMB (International Travel Maps)

International Travel Maps and Books

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Editorial Review:

Paper folded road and travel map in color. Scale 1:2,500,000. Distinguishes roads ranging from main roads (paved) to other roads (usually unpaved). Legend includes permanent tracks (unpaved), railways, international boundaries, province boundaries, mountain peaks, springs, caves, points of interest, official tourist resorts, official camp sites, nature sights, international airports, other airfields, sand dunes, nature reserves (approximate boundary), mountain passes. Includes inset map of Ulaanbaatar, index of Mongolia places and meaning of important terms.

Lost in Mongolia: Rafting the World's Last Unchallenged River

Colin Angus

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the Yenisey’s headwaters in the wild heart of central Asia to its mouth on the Arctic Ocean, Colin Angus and his fellow adventurers travel 5,500 kilometres of one of the world’s most dangerous rivers through remotest Mongolia and Siberia, and live to tell about it.

Exploration is Colin Angus’ calling. It is not only the tug of excitement and challenge that keeps sending him on death-defying journeys down some of the world’s most powerful waterways, it is a desire to know a place more intimately than you could from the window of a train, to feel the soul of a place. Angus emphasizes that rivers have always been key to the development of complex societies and the rise of civilizations, offering as they do irrigation, transportation, hydroelectric power, and food. But, as Lost in Mongolia captures with breathtaking detail, while they giveth plenty, the great rivers also taketh away in an instant. In Lost in Mongolia, Colin Angus takes readers through never-before-seen territory and his wonderful sense of adventure and humour come through on every page.

Fly-Fishing the 41st: From Connecticut to Mongolia and Home Again: A Fisherman's Odyssey

James Prosek

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Nice read about the travels of one lucky guy 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Travelogue of fly fisherman, artist, author James Prosek who circumnavigates the globe along the 41st parallel fishing and recording rare species of native trout. Prosek writes of wine, women, fishing and fellowship in a casual, loosely structured style...what more could a man want in a quick read? Johannes, his Austrian friend, figures largely in this book because he must--he is a unique character to say the least. At times, however, there is a little too much focus on those around the author, Johannes especially, and too little introspection. Kudos are due to Prosek however for his sensitive and open-minded treatment of the various cultures he is presented with in his travels; Also, for not trying to make some grand declaration of self-discovery. Prosek simply lets this book be what it ought to be.

Editorial Review:

The New York Times has called James Prosek "the Audubon of the fishing world," and in Fly-Fishing the 41st, he uses his talent for descriptive writing to illuminate an astonishing adventure. Beginning in his hometown of Easton, Connecticut, Prosek circumnavigates the globe along the 41st parallel, traveling through Spain, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, China, and Japan. Along the way he shares some of the best fishing in the world with a host of wonderfully eccentric and memorable characters.

Vanished Kingdoms: A Woman Explorer in Tibet, China, and Mongolia 1921-1925

Mabel Cabot

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the early 1920s, the last great age of world explorers, a remarkable young woman, Janet Elliott Wulsin, set out with her husband, Frederick Wulsin, for the far reaches of China, Tibet, and Outer Mongolia to study the people, flora and fauna of the region. Wulsin's strenuous, eventful exploration is detailed by a text enriched with excerpts from her candid personal letters. The journey proved to be a test of the Wulsins' endurance and of their relationship. While in Asia, the Wulsins took many extraordinary photographs, which form the heart of this richly-produced publication. They documented tribespeople and sublime desert landscapes, and, most remarkably, were allowed to photograph the interior of several of the great Tibetan Buddhist lamaseries, including Choni, Kumbum, and Labrang. Several dozen rare, hand-painted lantern slides survived and are reproduced here in splendid color. The photographs from the Wulsin Expedition, now in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard Unversity, in collaboration with whom this volume is being produced, are a testament to the great spirit and success of a remarkable woman explorer. "[the] pictures are thrilling and romantic: Janet in various native costumes, the insides of temples never before photographed . . . (sun-glasses, boots, rustic camps, also make this a costume designer's fantasy of a book)." --Los Angeles Times "Janet Wulsin covered thousands of miles in remote China on foot, mule, camel and raft, developing and cataloguing astonishingly beautiful, otherwordly photographs . . . Wulsin's diaries and letters are as illustrative and vivid as the photos themselves." --Washington Post Edited and Essay by Mabel H. Cabot. Preface by Rubie Watson. Hardcover, 11.25 x 9.75 in./192 pgs / 139 color.