Eurasian Lynx, Grey Wolf & Wolverine: Bulnai Mountains

Day 1|Arrive in Ulaanbaatar — The Hard Quest Begins

Airport transfer, 1 hr

Arrival and transfer to your hotel. Over dinner, the team is frank about the odds and the method: three shy carnivores, deep snow, and trackers who have spent their lives learning this country. That is the expedition.

Day 2|Aldarkhaan via Uliastai — Into Zavkhan

Fly 1 hr, then drive 1 hr

A short flight to Uliastai and a quick drive to camp near Aldarkhaan, where forested mountains meet the steppe. The first tracks are usually found before the first dinner.

Day 3|Aldarkhaan — First Trackings

Days here start with a circuit of the valley edges, reading the night's traffic: lynx pad-marks along a frozen stream, the businesslike trot of a wolf pair, perhaps the pigeon-toed lope that means wolverine. Each fresh line becomes the day's plan.

Day 4|Aldarkhaan — The Forest Edge

Lynx country proper: larch groves where roe deer shelter and the cats hunt at dawn and dusk. Long quiet watches from vantage points, with red deer, foxes and black grouse to fill the hours between.

Day 5|Aldarkhaan — Persistence in the Snow

A full day following the strongest lead — sometimes on foot along a trackline for hours, sometimes staking out a kill the rangers have found. This is tracking as it has been done here for centuries, with binoculars instead of rifles.

Day 6|Uliastai — A Night in Town

Drive 1 hr

Descend to Uliastai — one of Mongolia's oldest towns, folded photogenically into its river valley — for hot showers, resupply and a comfortable hotel night between the expedition's two halves.

Day 7|Bulnai Mountains — The Second Territory

Drive 2–3 hrs

North into the Bulnai range, wilder and higher than Aldarkhaan. This is wolverine's stronghold — vast, trackless winter country where the great mustelid patrols enormous circuits, and where wolves and lynx hunt the same slopes.

Day 8|Bulnai Mountains — Wolverine Water

The rangers concentrate on the high basins where wolverine sign is most frequent. A day of big country and long glass; even the tracks — each print the size of a wolf's but wrong in gait — raise the hair on your neck.

Day 9|Bulnai Mountains — The Long Game

Camera traps checked with the rangers reveal what walks these valleys after dark. By day, vigils continue at the likeliest crossings; ibex on the crags and wolves' distant howling keep the wilderness loud.

Day 10|Bulnai Mountains — Deep Winter Days

Everything now serves the best remaining chances — a dawn return to wherever yesterday's freshest story was written. In this country, fortune genuinely favours the patient; some of our best encounters have come on day nine of ten.

Day 11|Bulnai Mountains — Last Day in the Range

A final full day on the tracklines, then the farewell feast in camp — and honest tallies: what was seen, what was heard, what left only its signature in the snow.

Day 12|Ulaanbaatar via Uliastai — Return

Drive 2–3 hrs, then fly 1 hr

Drive to Uliastai and fly back to Ulaanbaatar for a farewell dinner in the warmth.

Day 13|Fly Home — Departure

Airport transfer, 1 hr

Breakfast and airport transfer — with stories very few wildlife travelers can tell.