One Duffel, One Month: The Steppe Packing List I Wish Someone Had Handed Me

Every December, the emails start. Somebody's cousin saw my eagle hunter photographs, decided Mongolia is happening next summer, and wants to know what to pack. I used to write long, rambling replies. Now I just send them this.

Fair warning: it's less a checklist than a confession. My first trip out to the steppe, I brought a tent, a camp stove, and enough protein bars to survive a siege. All three went untouched for a month. Here's what actually matters.

The Bag Itself

One duffel. Not a roller suitcase — those die on the first dirt track out of Ulaanbaatar, and the tracks get dirt fast. I use a 90-liter duffel with backpack straps, plus a small daypack for the camera and water. If you can't carry everything yourself for two hundred meters, you've brought too much. That's the whole test.

The Camera Kit (Simplified)

You don't need everything you think you need.

• One body, two lenses. A 24-70 and a long lens — the 100-400 lives on my camera out here, because the best moments happen at a distance your feet won't close.
• More batteries than seems reasonable. Cold eats batteries for breakfast. I carry six and sleep two of them inside my sleeping bag.
• A polarizer. The sky out here is enormous, and it will eat your contrast without one.
• A lens cloth per week, plus one. Dust is the national condition.
• A hard drive and a backup. Two copies, always. One stays in the duffel, one rides in the daypack.

Leave the tripod at home if you're only going for two weeks. You'll shoot handheld at f/8 because the light is that good, or you'll set the camera on a saddle and call it a day.

Clothing: Think Layers, Not Armor

The mistake Americans make is buying expedition-grade everything. You're visiting families, not summiting anything. What you need:

• Merino base layers, two sets. One on, one drying.
• A real down jacket. This is the one place to spend money. Steppe nights are cold even in July.
• A wind shell. The wind is the actual enemy out here, more than cold or rain.
• Broken-in boots and one pair of camp shoes. Crocs are ugly and correct.
• A sleeping bag rated to 20°F. Even in gers, which are warmer than you'd guess, the floor is the floor.
• A hat, gloves, and a buff. The buff does triple duty: dust mask, ear warmer, and dignity-preserver on days you skip the shower that doesn't exist.

Gifts: The Part Nobody Tells You

You will be a guest in people's homes, and you should not arrive empty-handed. Skip the trinkets. What has worked for me, year after year:

• Good tea and real coffee. Instant coffee is a staple out here; bringing actual beans makes you an instant hero.
• Quality headlamps and spare batteries. Useful, durable, always welcome.
• Fruit. Oranges and apples from a UB supermarket are genuinely exotic on the steppe. Kids lose their minds.
• Photos. A small portable printer changed my trips. Handing a herder's wife a print of her own family before you leave is worth more than everything else in your bag combined.

Ask your fixer or guide what the specific families need. Sometimes it's school supplies, sometimes it's a particular medicine. Specific beats generic.

The Medical Kit

Small but serious. Blister care, ibuprofen, Imodium, rehydration salts, a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics (talk to your travel doctor), tweezers, and a proper bandage kit. The nearest real hospital may be a full day of driving, and the drive itself is the dangerous part. Also: sunscreen you don't mind reapplying in wind, and lip balm. The steppe will chap your lips into a different personality.

What I Stopped Bringing

This is the part that saves you. The tent — you'll sleep in gers, and turning down a ger to camp alone is, depending on the family, either baffling or mildly insulting. The camp stove — every ger runs on a stove, and tea is always three minutes away. The protein bars — you will be fed, constantly, whether you're hungry or not. Someone will hand you a bowl of something with mutton in it approximately every ninety minutes. The bars come home unopened, every time.

Also gone: the second camera body, the drone (wind, permits, and it scares the herds), and anything you'd be devastated to lose. The steppe is forgiving of everything except excess.

The One Non-Negotiable

Flexibility. It doesn't pack, but bring it anyway. Rivers flood. Vans break down. A family two valleys over will invite you to a wedding, and you're going, and your itinerary isn't. Everything I've listed above fits in one duffel with room to spare — and that extra room is the point. You'll fill it with things people give you on the way out, and you'll carry them home heavier than you arrived, which is exactly how it should work.

Pack light. Stay long. Say yes to the tea.