MONGOLIA is a land of extremes – entirely landlocked and with a population smaller than Singapore spread over the 17th-largest land area of any state, it has the lowest population density in the world.

Heavy summer rains and a washed out road greeted us on our first night in Mongolia, as we drove over six hours to the Orkhon Valley. Designated a Unesco World Heritage Site, it marks one of the key historic centres of political power and cultural significance – a spiritual axis mundi – on the Mongolian steppe. 

Fed by the Orkhon River and marking the easternmost point of the Khangai mountains, this region was a natural focal point for successive pastoral nomadic empires. From being the centre of Gokturk and Uyghur Khaganate authority in the sixth to ninth centuries, to the site of the historical capital of the Mongol Empire – Karakorum (present-day Kharkhorin) – in the 13th century, the Orkhon Valley’s rolling landscape belies millenia of cultural heritage.