Songino Khairkhan, Ulan Bator — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Songino Khairkhan?

Songinokhairkhan Uul gives the district both its name and its landmark. The holy mountain rises on the western side of Ulan Bator, a revered height that herders and city families climb, and its slopes mark where the streets of Songino Khairkhan run out into open grassland. The district itself is a lived-in, working part of the capital rather than a museum quarter.

Apartment blocks, market rows and the busy avenues threading west carry most of its life, while the roads leaving Ulan Bator for the wider steppe cross its ground. Grassland begins where the streets end.

What is the history of Songino Khairkhan?

Songino Khairkhan took shape as one of the districts of Ulan Bator in 1965, when the growing capital was divided into administrative parts alongside Bayanzürkh and Sükhbaatar. It filled fast. Herders and rural families moving toward the city settled its western edge, first in the felt tents of the ger districts and later in the blocks of flats that spread along the main roads below Songinokhairkhan Uul.

The district drew its name from that holy mountain. As Ulan Bator pushed outward through the later part of the century, Songino Khairkhan grew into the largest of the capital's western divisions.

Where is Songino Khairkhan?

Songino Khairkhan spreads west from the heart of Ulan Bator across roughly 1,200 square kilometres, a broad district of Mongolia running from the built-up core out below Songinokhairkhan Uul toward the open steppe, with Sükhbaatar bounding it to the north-east and Bayanzürkh lying east.