"Mongolia is kind of close, right?" Story about an attempt to ski everywhere in the world where there's snow. And in some places where there isn't. On and off-piste skiing on all continents, skiing into craters of live volcanoes, caving, climbing, photography, and travel.
This was my first experience flying Turkish Airlines on long-haul flights. I had initially wanted to get the cheap tickets from Frankfurt to Ulaanbaatar on Mongolian Airlines, but they didn't seem to be available on my dates, so I opted for going from Helsinki to Istanbul and then to Ulaanbaatar. The layover in Istanbul was only an hour and five minutes, which was unnerving. But I made it, so did my luggage, and overall had a happy experience with Turkish Airlines. Full, hot meals on intra-European flights, eyeshades for the tourist class passengers, etc. Nice!
The European flights seem to be running on new Airbus A321 NEOs, and the Ulaanbaatar route is every second day only, using a single A330. The A330 is comfortable, seating is not too bad even in the back. Maybe the colors bring some 1970s feeling though:
My AirTags were telling me that all my luggage had been loaded from the Helsinki flight to the Ulaanbaatar flight, despite the very tight connection. Well done:
Then we arrived at the Chinggis Khaan airport at Ulaanbaatar (official page, wikipedia). The first pictures are from the outside, next one a sign in the airport, and then the check-in area and the gate areas. And finally some other planes in the airport.
Return journey:
The route from Istanbul to Ulaanbaatar does not go over Russia, thank God. Still, it goes unnervingly close to for instance Baku that was the starting point of the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 that Russians shot down without any clue or care about the innocent passengers.
At the Helsinki-Vantaa airport, I also had a nice even if a bit cold sauna experience, see the other article here. And in Ulaanbaatar I explored caves and went skiing, see the articles here and here.
For more flying stories, check out the planetflier.com website! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2025 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.
When one drags a ton of luggage to the airport and is heading for a long flight, it would be nice to visit a sauna. Except if you aren't on your usual airline that has the nice sauna in their lounge... However, to my big surprise I found a new, FREE, sauna on the non-Schengen side of the airport near gate 40. The downside? The sauna is a bit on the cold side... but it was a nice and quiet place to sit and have a conference call, at least. Until some some little people arrived and started playing ...
The sauna:
Here is where the sauna is located at. It is a Christmas cabin, where everyone can get to the Christmas spirit :-) More information here.
I tried hard. Very hard. To find more caves than the 100 Monks Cave... but it was difficult. After long period of Internet searching, I settled on visiting the Crystal "cave", even if it was just an abandoned man-made mine. It was nearby though, also in Terelj, and not 17 hour drive away so that's a positive :-) But my first guide was unable to take me to this place, so I looked for another guide company. A got the whole deal, the driver, the guy who speaks English to me, and the local guide who knows where the mine is :-)
Except ... maybe not. After hiking for a long time in an admittedly beautiful valleys among spectacular rock formations in sunshine but also freezing wind, the guide couldn't find the mine. We did find it, eventually, after several calls to people in the know, and more walking.
Except ... maybe not. This wasn't the Crystal cave I had found from the Internet. It was a crystal mine for sure, and had the crystals around it to prove it. It was also made by Chinese like the other one. However, it was a different mine, in a different location. That's of course alright, I still got a crystal mine :-)
Except ... I didn't. We were standing next to the hole, with no ropes or other ways to enter the vertical shaft down to the mine floor 10+ meters below. So we couldn't actually go inside. The other mine would have been horizontal.
Anyway, it was a very nice walk in the mountains, and I saw some smaller cavelets or mini-caves along the way, and spectacular red rock. And met a very nice family living in a Ger (yurt tent), and had a superb lunch, though of course all meals are probably superb after a roundtrip 10km walk in the mountains :-)
So I'm happy, after all :-)
Here's the mine I was originally trying to get to:
The West Crystal Cave, again in Terelj National Park. This is an old mine, so man-made underground tunnel. I have not been here, but pictures show nice icicles etc. It seems possible to enter this place. The coordinates are N 47.876958 E 107.372582. The location is west of the main road going through Terelj. You will have to hike kilometers from the road to the top of the ridge. See these links for more information: Google Maps, Lonely Planet, Monrevetours, Monrevetours photos on Flickr, Facebook tour advertisement.
The East Crystal Cave, also in Terelj National Park. East of the main road this time. This is also a mine, and one that I visited. Or at least stood on entrance to it. You can't enter without ropes, the mine is a tunnel straight down until it branches off horizontally. I hiked 5 kilometers (one-way) from nearest road to get here. The coordinates are N 47.912347 E 107.48860.
The other caves I saw are here:
A tiny roof cave in boulders (or cavelet), again in Terelj National Park. The coordinates are N 47.910005 E 107.48736. The sheltered area is approximately 2.5 m.
FWIW, I also looked at a crack in one of the cliffs (coordinates N 47.903264 E 107.47713) but in the end determined that this was too small to be listed even as a cavelet.
A roof cave in a cliff face, used as a cow shed of a farm. Again in Terelj National Park. This seems more like a real cave, though as it was on someone's farm, I did not enter it. The coordinates are N 47.889781 E 107.46194. The sheltered area is longer than 5 m, but since I was not next to the cave, I was unable to measure this exactly.
Here are some of the other views from this walkabout:
Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos and text (c) 2025 by Jari Arkko, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
Mongolia caving, yay! Freezing temperatures and beautiful red granite rock of the Terelj national park near Ulaanbaatar, what's not to like? On my way to Mongolia I run into to other travelers from Finland, and they were able to join me on the Sunday excursion to Terelj. Together with a guide we headed to the 100 ламын агуй, or the 100 Monk Cave. Besides caves, we also looked at turtle-shaped massive rocks, world's largest horse rider statue, local population's ger (yurt) tents, and snowy mountains. The only question is if the cave will fit 100 monks as advertised ...
It was surprisingly difficult to find visitable caves in Mongolia. But since I was in Mongolia for the skiing, I also wanted to visit a cave... as this would be my 32nd country that I'd have been in caves at. I finally managed to find one, as our guide Nomuundalai Batdelger remembered a cave in the Terelj park. I had found many caves from Mongolia, but most of them were far away from Ulaanbaatar, and the short trip and the winter didn't really allow travel. For instance, travel to the Khoid Tsenkher cave would take some 17 hours by car to western Mongolia. By the way, I have a separate article about the caves in Mongolia for future reference if anyone wants to visit the caves that are publicly known.
The 100 Monk Cave is sitting next to the road through Terelj, so it is easy to access. We went first around the large rock to find where the cave entrance is, but the main cave entrance turned out to be on the front facing the road. You'll just have to climb up a bit. The entrance to the cave is a bit slippery, I think the rock has gotten smooth due to the many visitors, and of course the winter doesn't help the situation. I was afraid I'd fall if I was higher up the cave entrance, as it was sloping side ways up. Further inside the cave it was easy, as the slope was less steep and the surface was less slippery. There's two entrances to the cave, the lower and the upper, but at least I was unable to use the lower one, as the step down from that entrance was a bit sketchy.
Then there's a side cave, which isn't really a proper cave as the rock just forms a small roof over the side of the big rock, so you can stay protected from the rain if you need to.
The main cave continues for 28.26 meters, so it is quite sizable for us Finns who have been used to tiny caves :-) Inside the cave, as is the tradition in Asia, people have brought small gifts: candles, cookies, a small toy horse, paper money, ... and even gold-colored goblets. While the entrance is just rock, further in the cave there's sand and dirt on the floor as well. The cave gets pretty low though in the end.
I loved the view out of the cave to the mountains on the opposing side of the valley. An example in the opening picture on this article.
So what about the 100 monks? Some doubts have been expressed if you really could have had 100 monks inside. Since I did a 3D scan of the cave, I got the length that was mentioned above, as well as the width that varies between 5 and 11 meters. If we take the average of those widths, we arrive at the floor space of about 225 m2. This is more than 2 m2 per monk, so assuming they are fine sleeping on a sloping rock, this should be plenty of space for the 100 monks to camp in :-) Definitely not just 10, as the sign next to the cave says. But also, 1000 would be too much.
About the 3D scans, I've been doing them with the iPhone's lidar, and using them to document caves. The scan was a bit troublesome this time though. My phone run out of battery in the middle of the process, maybe due to the -24 temperature in the morning. And then it run into some other issues, maybe software or just running out storage on the phone. I assumed the scans were lost, but it turned out that I was able to piece together a workable model from the two half-finished broken scans. That was a nice surprise! I used the 3D resulting model to draw maps (using the software I had written earlier), measure the length of the cave, and give an ability to look at the cave in 3D on your browser screen. More on this later in the article.
The cave is in these coordinates: N 47.8395200 E 107.3990359. There's a nice coffee and cashmere shop right by the rock outcrop, as well as a horse and camel riding on the other side of the road. The the side roof cave is at coordinates: N 47.839820 E 107.398632.
We also visited the Turtle Rock, a massive turtle-shape rock. Or a mountain, really. That too had a small cave-like space in a corner of the rock, in a crack between the different rock parts. To get to this crack, one has to climb up the right side of the rock until you find the crack. In the winter this was a bit challenging, as the snow and ice made again everything quite slippery. And the rock is very large. The coordinates for the Turtle Rock are: N 47.907703 E 107.422819.
Main cave pictures:
Here's the cave entrance from the outside, the cracking going horizontally up to the right:
Here is the 3D scan, turned into a horizontal map and some vertical cut-outs. Here's the plan view (horizontal) map:
And an example vertical cut view from point A. Note how the cave is slanted to the side.
The full map including all cut-outs is available in PDF format here. The 3D model can be downloaded in GLB format from here and Blender format here. You can rotate the model on your own browser screen by clicking on this link.
A screenshot of the model can be see below:
Fly-through in the model:
Views from the site:
Side cave pictures:
Turtle rock:
Lunch at a ger tent:
Tsingis Khan statue:
I also attempted to visit the (or rather "a") crystal cave nearby. More on that story in another article. And saunas and swimming in yet another article.
Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos and text (c) 2025 by Jari Arkko, Grayden Prince and Hanna Mykkänen. All rights reserved.
