Tsenkher Hot Springs

The springs at Tsenkher rise at over eighty degrees in a wooded valley in the Khangai, and several ger camps have been built around them, each piping and cooling the water into open-air pools where guests soak with pine forest around and, at night, a sky with no light pollution at all. This is one of the standard overnight stops on the central Mongolian circuit between Kharkhorin and the Great White Lake, and it is the one where travellers who have been camping for a week get properly warm and clean. The water is mineral-rich and the local tradition attributes benefits to it. Beyond the pools there is walking in the surrounding hills and horse riding from the camps. The valley is green, wooded and quiet, and the road in from Tsetserleg is rough enough to keep the numbers down.

What you actually see

• Open-air pools - hot mineral water piped and cooled into bathing pools.
• Forest valley - pine and larch slopes around the camps.
• Ger camp accommodation - the standard overnight base at the springs.
• Night skies - exceptional darkness for stargazing from the water.

When to go

June to September for the roads; the springs work year-round and winter bathing with snow around is popular but access is hard. August is busiest. Nights are cold, which is precisely why the pools are good.

Honest expectations

The springs are entirely inside private camps, so bathing means paying for a camp or a day rate; there is no free public pool. Camp standards vary widely. The road in is rough. Water temperature in the pools varies between camps and can be too hot or barely warm.

Nearby

Tsetserleg is north; Kharkhorin lies southeast.