Mongolia is a vast, elevated country with an average altitude of 5,180 feet (1,580 meters), making it one of the highest nations on Earth. Its landscape is defined by a dramatic mix of mountain ranges, desert basins, open grasslands, deep lakes, and volcanic fields. Sitting on mountains and plateaus between Russia and China, Mongolia packs a surprising variety of terrain into a landmass roughly the size of Alaska.
The Altai Mountains
Mongolia’s most imposing landform is the Altai mountain range, which sweeps across the western part of the country. The highest point in all of Mongolia, Khüiten Peak, stands at 4,374 meters (14,350 feet) and sits near the convergence of the Mongolian, Russian, Chinese, and Kazakh borders. The surrounding peaks near the Khalasi Glacier reach close to 4,000 meters, and several remain unclimbed and unexplored. The Mongolian Altai is a rugged, glaciated landscape that forms the backbone of the country’s western geography and creates a natural barrier separating Mongolia from its neighbors.
The Khangai and Khentii Ranges
Two other mountain ranges define Mongolia’s interior. The Khangai Mountains run through central Mongolia and serve as a major continental divide: rivers flowing from their crest either drain toward the Arctic and Pacific oceans or disappear into the dry interior basins. The northern flanks of the Khangai hold a remarkable volcanic region called Khorgo, with about a dozen extinct volcanoes and numerous volcanic lakes scattered across the landscape.
To the east, the Khentii Mountains rise from the forested northern part of the country. This range is the source of the Kherlen River, Mongolia’s third longest, which flows south from the Khentii before turning eastward across the eastern plains and into China. The Khentii range is also historically significant as the homeland of Genghis Khan. Between the eastern slopes of the Khangai and the western foothills of the Khentii lies a broad intermontane basin, one of several large depressions that characterize Mongolia’s terrain.
The Gobi Desert
The Gobi covers roughly one third of Mongolia’s total territory, stretching across the entire southern portion of the country. It is not the endless sand sea many people picture. Instead, the Gobi is a patchwork of bare rock, gravel plains, sparse scrubland, and scattered oases, with sand dunes making up only a small fraction of the total area.
Biogeographers divide the Mongolian Gobi into four or five distinct regions, each with different precipitation levels, altitudes, and plant and animal communities. The major divisions include the Southern Altai Gobi, the Dzungarian Gobi, and the Alashaa desert. Scientists have identified over 50 oases in the Altai portion alone, with another 10 in the Dzungarian section and 20 in the Alashaa.
The most visually striking feature within the Gobi is Khongoryn Els, a massive field of sand dunes in the extreme south. These dunes stretch roughly 100 kilometers long (some estimates say up to 180 kilometers), span 6 to 12 kilometers wide, and rise to heights of 80 meters on average, with some peaks reaching 300 meters (nearly 1,000 feet). Known as the “singing dunes” for the sound they produce in wind, they cover over 965 square kilometers.
The Eastern Steppe
East of the mountains and north of the Gobi, Mongolia opens into one of the last great intact temperate grasslands on Earth. The Eastern Mongolian Steppe is a vast, treeless expanse of flat and gently rolling terrain, characterized by open grasslands, wetlands, and low hills that extend to the Chinese border and the Khyangan Mountain Range. A UNESCO-proposed protected area here covers about 2.1 million hectares across five components, but the steppe itself stretches far beyond those boundaries.
This landscape supports enormous herds of Mongolian gazelle, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, that migrate freely across the plains. The steppe’s defining quality is its sheer openness: in many areas, you can see to the horizon in every direction without a single tree or structure breaking the line.
Lakes and Depressions
Western Mongolia contains a series of large tectonic depressions, basins formed by the same geological forces that built the Altai Mountains. These low-lying areas hold some of the country’s largest lakes, including Uureg Lake (sitting at about 1,383 meters elevation), Achit Lake (1,429 meters), and Tolbo Lake (2,062 meters). The depressions are encircled by elevated mountain ranges, creating dramatic bowl-shaped landscapes.
The country’s most significant single lake is Khövsgöl, located in the far north near the Russian border. It is the largest freshwater lake in Central Asia, with a maximum depth of 267 meters and a water volume of 381 cubic kilometers. Often called Mongolia’s “younger sister of Lake Baikal,” Khövsgöl holds an enormous share of the region’s freshwater and sits in a deep rift surrounded by forested mountains.
The Orkhon River Valley
Central Mongolia’s Orkhon River Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape covering 121,967 hectares of grassland along the Orkhon River, with a buffer zone of another 61,044 hectares. The valley combines wide, grassy river terraces with rocky outcrops and waterfalls, including the Orkhon Waterfall, which drops from a basalt cliff formed by ancient volcanic activity. The river basin has been home to successive nomadic cultures for thousands of years, and its landforms reflect a long interplay between geological processes and pastoral land use.
The Dariganga Volcanic Field
In the far southeast corner of Mongolia, the Dariganga volcanic field is one of the country’s most unusual landforms. This region contains over 200 scoria cones, small steep-sided volcanic hills, and their associated lava flows spread across roughly 14,000 square kilometers. The volcanoes are extinct, but their cones remain clearly visible on the otherwise flat steppe, creating a landscape unlike anything else in the country. The field sits in a transitional zone between the eastern grasslands and the fringes of the Gobi, giving it a stark, otherworldly quality.