The Most Beautiful Places in Mongolia
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Mongolia are Lake Khövsgöl, Erdene Zuu Monastery and Flaming Cliffs. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Mongolia is a high country of steppe, mountain and desert, far from any sea, with a climate of hard winters and huge skies. Its landscapes change from the forested lakes of the north to the dunes and red cliffs of the Gobi in the south, and for most of history nomadic herders moved across them rather than building cities. That is why its architecture gathers in a few places of great weight: Buddhist monasteries founded after Tibetan Buddhism spread among the Mongols in the 16th and 17th centuries, standing alone on open plains.
Lake Khövsgöl in the north is a deep, clear mountain lake ringed by larch forest, holding a large share of the country's fresh water. Erdene Zuu, founded in the 16th century beside the ruins of Karakorum, the old capital of Genghis Khan's empire, is enclosed by a long wall lined with stupas. Amarbayasgalant Monastery, built in the 18th century in a remote northern valley, is one of the finest surviving groups of Buddhist temples in the country, in a style that blends Chinese and Mongolian forms.
The Gobi gives the list its other face. The Flaming Cliffs at Bayanzag are eroded red sandstone bluffs where expeditions in the 1920s found the first dinosaur eggs to be recognised by science, and Khongoryn Els is a long band of tall sand dunes that hum when the sand slides, known locally as the singing dunes.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Khövsgöl | Lake | |
| 2 | Erdene Zuu Monastery | Monastery | |
| 3 | Flaming Cliffs | Cliff | |
| 4 | Amarbayasgalant Monastery | Monastery | |
| 5 | Khongoryn Els | Dune |
01 Lake Khövsgöl
Mongolia51.100° N 100.500° E
Bernard Gagnon · CC0 Lake Khövsgöl is a long blade of exceptionally clear water laid across the far north of Mongolia, 1,645 metres above sea level and only a short distance from the Russian border. It stretches about 136 km from north to south and is at most some 36 km wide, covering roughly 2,760 km².
Did you know? Among the world's ancient lakes, only Antarctica's subglacial Lake Vostok is considered more pristine.
02 Erdene Zuu Monastery
Mongolia47.202° N 102.843° E
Image by hbieser from Pixabay On the open steppe of the Orkhon Valley, a long white wall studded with small stupas encloses a vast square of grassland in which a handful of temples stand far apart, their green-tiled Chinese-style roofs bright against the hills.
Did you know? The Bodhi Stupa of 1799 was filled with more than 100,000 small Buddha images, over 2,500 clay votive stupas and the ashes of the founder, Abtai Khan.
03 Flaming Cliffs
Mongolia44.139° N 103.728° E
Image by hbieser from Pixabay In the low evening sun the sandstone walls of Bayanzag turn red and orange against the grey-green gravel plain of the Gobi, which is how the place earned its English name.
Did you know? Before giving it a formal name, Osborn mentioned Velociraptor in a popular press article as "Ovoraptor djadochtari", a name that was later dropped.
04 Amarbayasgalant Monastery
Mongolia49.480° N 105.085° E
Bogomolov.PL · Public domain In a broad, empty valley of northern Mongolia, framed by grassy hills and larch-covered ridges, a walled compound of tiled roofs appears with no town anywhere around it.
Did you know? The monastery stands at the foot of Mount Büren-Khaan in the Iven valley.
05 Khongoryn Els
Mongolia43.500° N 103.167° E
Sarah Lachise sarahla · CC0 In the south of Mongolia, Khongoryn Els lies along the foot of the Gobi Altai like a long, pale wave that has stopped in mid-motion. The dune field runs for about 100 kilometres and is up to 12 kilometres wide, its ridges typically some 80 metres high but climbing to around 300 metres at the highest crests.
Did you know? The highest dunes of the whole field stand at its north-western end.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Mongolia?
- On our list, Lake Khövsgöl ranks first, followed by Erdene Zuu Monastery and Flaming Cliffs.
- What was found at the Flaming Cliffs?
- In the 1920s, the American Museum of Natural History expeditions led by Roy Chapman Andrews found the first dinosaur eggs recognised as such at Bayanzag, along with fossils of Protoceratops and Velociraptor. The name Flaming Cliffs comes from the glow of the red sandstone at sunset.
- Why is Lake Khövsgöl called the younger sister of Lake Baikal?
- Khövsgöl lies in the same rift system as Baikal, not far to its south-west, and like Baikal it is a deep, very clear and ancient lake. Its waters drain north through the Selenga River system into Baikal itself.
- Why are the Khongoryn Els called the singing dunes?
- When sand slides down the steep faces of the Khongoryn Els dunes, the grains vibrate together and produce a low humming or droning sound. The dunes lie in Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park in southern Mongolia.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Mongolia?
- In our collection, the places in Mongolia are most often monasteries (2), cliffs (1), dunes (1) and lakes (1).
- How many places are on this list in Mongolia?
- The list covers 5 places.