Here are links to two blog posts by adventure travel photographer and writer, Nathan Ward. Nathan has visited Mongolia on numerous occasions over the last 15 years, and in the summer of 2008 he visited Fish Mongolia’s camp on the Delger Muron, and took a trip to the Taiga hosted by the new Tsaatan co-op tourism initiative, the Tsaatan Community Visitor Centre.
Lenok, Grayling and Taimen in Mongolia Trip Report by Nathan Ward on FishMongolia.com
From the airport in Muren, we bumped our way over the grassy Mongolian Steppe past nomad tents and herds. At first I thought “No way is there a big river hidden out here!” But we snuck on a trackless route over a few hills and down a steep valley into a hidden canyon where a beautiful river stretched out before us.
The Delger-Muron River Valley is absolutely stunning – a wide river alternating between rapids and deep pools, a wildflower laced valley floor and big high cliffs like bookmarks on either side. It’s one of the nicest places I’ve seen in Mongolia and there wasn’t a village for miles in any direction. We had the entire river to ourselves.
Fly Fishing on Mongolia's Delger River. Photo: Nathan Ward
How to Teach Nomads Catch and Release: blog article by Nathan Ward on Ice Mountain Adventure Travel Blog
Fish grow big in the remote wilds of Mongolia and this was why we were here, to catch monster fish and create a feature story for a fishing magazine in the USA. It takes a long time, 8-10 years, for a Lenok to grow to the size of the one Andrea caught. That means surviving the -50ºF winters, rogue net fishermen, wild animals and floods for a decade. Then we come along with a little artificial fly and catch them for fun.
We traveled into far northern Mongolia on horseback to visit the Tsataan people, a reindeer herding culture with only 600 or so people left in their entire ethnic category. After a few days at their mountain top camp we convinced two of them to lead us to a big river we could see from a nearby peak. “It’s just a 4 hour ride” they mimed and we set off. It was just 4 hours, but 4 of the toughest mountain riding I have ever done. We were really in the wild, just kilometers from the Russian border.
Tsaatan Guide in the Mongolia Taiga. Photo: Nathan Ward
