Ulaanbaatar Walking Routes That Cost Nothing
A taxi driver parked outside Sukhbaatar Square will offer a private walking tour for 30,000 MNT or more. The three routes below cover the same ground for the price of a museum ticket, or less.
The Central Heritage Axis (free to walk)
Start at Sukhbaatar Square itself, free to enter and dominated by the Government Palace and its bronze statues of Genghis Khan, Ogedei Khan and Kublai Khan, plus the equestrian statue of Damdin Sukhbaatar at the center. From there it’s a flat 10-minute walk to the National Museum of Mongolia, which charges an entrance fee (reports put it around 20,000 MNT, verify at the door) for three floors of history running from Stone Age deer stones to 13th-century armor and traditional deel costumes. Continue past the State Department Store, free to browse even if you buy nothing, and finish at the Choijin Lama Temple Museum, a 1908 complex with a small ticket price that gets you inside to see the lacquered Tsam dance masks. Budget one entrance fee for this route if you visit the museum, zero if you only want the square and the store.
Gandan Monastery’s pilgrimage circuit
Walking the outer kora clockwise around Gandantegchinlen Monastery, alongside elderly pilgrims spinning the wooden prayer wheels, costs nothing. Going inside to see the 26.5-meter gilded Avalokiteshvara statue is where prices get inconsistent: some sources report free entry, others quote a foreigner fee in the 4,000 to 7,000 MNT range plus a separate photography fee inside the main temple (verify both at the gate, and expect the ticket counter to struggle making change for a large note). Morning is the best time to go, when monks chant and sound conch shells and horns during prayer.
Zaisan Hill and the Tuul River
This one is entirely free. The walk along the Tuul River to the base of Zaisan Memorial costs nothing, and the climb up 500-plus stone steps to the Soviet-era mosaic memorial costs nothing either. The only paid alternative is riding the elevators inside the connected Zaisan Hill shopping mall instead of taking the stairs, worth it if you’re carrying a bad knee or a bad hangover. At the top: a full turn of view over the whole city and the forested slopes of Bogd Khan Mountain.
What actually costs money
Cash, not the walking itself, is the real budget item here. Ticket booths at the museums and at Gandan routinely can’t break a large note, so carry small MNT denominations before you set out. Sidewalks in Ulaanbaatar are uneven and, in winter, icy, with construction gaps that aren’t always marked, so budget for sturdy shoes over anything you’d wear to a restaurant.
The verdict
Of the three, Zaisan Hill and the Tuul River walk is the one genuinely free route worth doing regardless of budget: no ticket booth, no fee dispute, just the best view in the city for the cost of showing up. The Central Heritage Axis earns its one museum fee if you have a couple of hours to spare; treat Gandan’s fee confusion as a reason to bring exact change, not a reason to skip a working monastery that survived the 1930s purges. For the city’s ticketed interiors bundled into a single day instead of a walk, see attraction tours in Ulaanbaatar .
Download or print a map before leaving the hotel. Mobile data can drop in the older parts of downtown, and paying for a data plan just to follow a walking route defeats the point of doing this for free.