Mongolia's Valley of Wild Cats

Day 1|Arrive in Ulaanbaatar — Welcome to the World's Coldest Capital

Airport transfer, 1 hr

Your expedition begins in Ulaanbaatar, where your Soaring Expeditions guide meets you at Chinggis Khaan International Airport for the short drive into the city. Settle into your hotel, then join the team for a welcome dinner and expedition briefing — routes, radios, layering systems and the etiquette of the spotting scope. Outside, the winter city hums beneath a veil of frost; ahead of you lie the emptiest mountains in Central Asia.

Day 2|Bulnai Mountains via Uliastai — West to the Snow Line

Fly 2 hrs, then drive 2–3 hrs

A morning flight carries you across a thousand kilometres of white steppe to Uliastai, one of Mongolia's oldest towns, folded into the mountains of Zavkhan. From here you travel overland into the Bulnai range, watching the country empty out with every kilometre. By late afternoon you reach your ger camp — felt walls, a crackling stove, and ridgelines above that hold ibex, wolves and the cats you have come so far to find.

Day 3|Bulnai Mountains — First Light, First Tracks

Days in snow leopard country follow the rhythm of the cat itself. You are on the slopes before sunrise, glassing the crags as pink light spills across the snow. Fresh tracks, a scrape beneath an overhang, the alarm whistle of ibex — every sign narrows the search. Local spotters who have watched these valleys for years work the scopes alongside you, reading the mountain the way others read a page.

Day 4|Bulnai Mountains — The Patience of Winter

Winter is the season the snow leopard descends, following the ibex down from the high crags — and the season its smoke-grey coat betrays it against fresh snow. Between long watches you explore side valleys for Pallas's cat hunched among the rocks, corsac fox stitching tracks across the drifts, and bearded vultures riding the wind off the ridges. Evenings end around the stove with hot food and the day's sightings retold.

Day 5|Bulnai Mountains — Deeper into the Range

A final full day in the Bulnai, with time to follow up on every lead the spotters have gathered — a kill site on a southern slope, a favoured travel line along a frozen streambed. Photographers can work the low winter light at length; those who prefer can join a herding family nearby to see how life is lived at minus twenty-five, over bowls of salted milk tea.

Day 6|Tosontsengel — A Night at the Cold Pole

Drive 2 hrs

Descending from the mountains, you cross the steppe to Tosontsengel, a timber town on the Ider River with a claim to fame all its own: it regularly records the coldest temperatures of any inhabited place in Mongolia. A hotel night here means hot showers, recharged batteries and a glimpse of workaday life in the remote west before the expedition turns toward its second stronghold.

Day 7|Margaz Mountains — Into the Valley of Wild Cats

Drive 3–4 hrs

Today you enter the range that gives this expedition its name. The Margaz massif rises in tiers of broken rock — classic snow leopard terrain, wintering ground for ibex, and home to the community rangers whose patrols help keep it that way. Your camp sits within reach of the best vantage points, and the first watch begins the moment the gers are warm.

Day 8|Margaz Mountains — Reading the Mountain

Dawn watches, midday tracking, dusk watches: the full apparatus of a serious search, in a range where snow leopards are followed year-round. Scan for the flick of a heavy tail behind a boulder, ravens circling something unseen, ibex herds frozen mid-slope with every head turned the same way. However the day unfolds, you are inside the drama of a working mountain ecosystem.

Day 9|Margaz Mountains — The Long Watch

Experience shows that persistence in one good range beats haste across many — which is why this expedition gives each stronghold several unhurried days. Camera-trap images collected with the rangers reveal which cats are moving through the valley; your guides match pug marks to individuals and adjust the plan each evening. Overhead, golden eagles and saker falcons patrol a sky of glassy blue.

Day 10|Margaz Mountains — Last Light over the Valley

A final day among the crags of Margaz — one more dawn vigil, one more sweep of the high bowls where the ibex shelter from the wind. By now the rhythm is second nature: the stillness, the cold, the sudden electric moment when a spotter stiffens behind the scope. Tonight the stove burns late as the team plots the route north to Uvs and the mountains beyond.

Day 11|Ulaangom — Crossing the Great Lakes Depression

Drive 4–5 hrs

A travelling day across one of Asia's strangest landscapes: the Great Lakes Depression, where saline lakes, dune fields and frozen reedbeds lie ringed by snow mountains — part of the UNESCO-listed Uvs Nuur Basin. Ulaangom, capital of Uvs Province, offers a comfortable hotel, a proper dinner and time to resupply before the final leg into the Altai.

Day 12|Altai Mountains — The Third Stronghold

Drive 4–5 hrs

West of Ulaangom the land climbs toward the glaciated peaks of the Altai system — the highest, wildest country of the whole journey. Your final camp sits beneath slopes that hold snow leopard, argali (the world's largest wild sheep) and ibex in impressive numbers. The scale here is different: bigger walls, deeper valleys, and a horizon of white summits marking the roof of Central Asia.

Day 13|Altai Mountains — Among Argali and Eagles

Full days in the high Altai, where every watch carries the chance of something exceptional. Argali rams file along the skyline; golden eagles — the same birds Kazakh eagle hunters have flown for centuries in these mountains — quarter the slopes. And somewhere above, moving between the crags on saucer feet, is the animal this whole expedition orbits. The scopes stay trained on the tracklines until the light gives out.

Day 14|Altai Mountains — A Final Dawn in the High Country

Your last full day in the mountains. One more sunrise turning the summits rose-gold, one more long morning behind the scope, one more chance for the encounter that rewrites everything. Whatever the mountain grants, the tally of sixteen winter days out here — tracks, kills, camera-trap portraits, perhaps the cat itself — is an experience very few people on earth can claim.

Day 15|Ulaanbaatar via Ulaangom — Return from the Wild West

Drive 4–5 hrs, then fly to Ulaanbaatar

Retracing the route to Ulaangom, you board the afternoon flight back to Ulaanbaatar and trade felt walls for a hot bath and crisp sheets. The evening is yours for a farewell dinner with your guides — a last round of stories, a toast to the spotters, and the strange feeling of streetlights after two weeks of starlight.

Day 16|Fly Home — Departure

Airport transfer, 1 hr

After breakfast, your driver takes you to Chinggis Khaan International Airport for your onward flight. You leave with frost-hardened boots, full memory cards and membership of a small fraternity: those who have gone looking for the grey ghost of the Altai in its own season, on its own terms.