I came to Mongolia for a conference. I left having slept under the most stars I have ever seen.
Mongolia was my 49th country and I spent around ten days there. It started with JCI ASPAC 2025 in Ulaanbaatar, where my full JCI Dhaka Founders team joined almost 5,000 delegates from around the world. Our first night set the tone: Turkish dinner inside a restaurant built like a real cave.
The Gobi had been in my head since a schoolbook told me it was one of the biggest deserts in the world. Most people give it 10 to 15 days. We had three. Twelve of us in two cars went around 600 km into the Gobi, rode camels on the dunes of Elsen Tasarkhai, the "Mini Gobi," and walked through Erdene Zuu in Kharkhorin, built with stones from the old Mongol capital.
On the way we stopped at a nomad family's camp. No address, hundreds of animals and a home that moves with the grass. That night, in a ger camp near Kharkhorin, there were no lights and no sounds. Just hills in the dark and more stars than I have ever seen. Mongolia does not try to impress you. The scale does all the work and the silence does the rest.
A Mongolia visa was not available to us on a Bangladeshi passport, so ASPAC arranged ours. Mongolia now offers an e-visa for most countries, so check the latest rules first. Give the Gobi more than three days if you can and book your car through a known agency.
