Gobi Gurvan Saikhan

Gobi Gurvan Saikhan National Park was established in 1993 in southern Mongolia and at some 27,000 km² it is the largest in the country. Its name means the three beauties of the Gobi, a reference to the three ranges that cross it, eastern spurs of the Altai reaching into the desert.

The landscape combines arid mountains, gravel plains, canyons and dune fields. The Khongoryn Els are a dune belt some hundred kilometres long and up to three hundred metres high, known as the singing dunes because the sand gives off a deep hum as it slides down the slopes. At the opposite extreme is Yolyn Am, a narrow, deep gorge where the lack of direct sunlight maintains an ice field that lasts much of the summer, a startling phenomenon in the middle of a desert.

The park is also one of the most important palaeontological sites in the world: in the red cliffs of Bayanzag and their surroundings, Roy Chapman Andrews's expedition found the first dinosaur eggs identified as such in the 1920s, and the region continues to yield discoveries. Its wildlife includes argali, Siberian ibex, goitered gazelle and a population of snow leopard, as well as the Bactrian camels of the nomadic families who graze their herds inside the park.