Every guest wants to arrive at a nomad family's ger with something meaningful. Not all gifts translate. Here is what actually delights Mongolian host families, from someone who has done this for 28 years.
Bayartsogt Ganbold
Mongolian hospitality has no transactional model. Families host without expecting payment and would be offended by it. But a gift, given at the end of a visit, is warmly received as acknowledgment of the guest-host exchange. The right gift signals that you saw the family as people, not as scenery.
School supplies for the kids: pencils, notebooks, colouring books. Family photographs printed on glossy paper that you send by post after returning home. Coffee beans for adults (Mongolia is a tea country, coffee is a luxury). Good quality multi-tools (Leatherman is the gold standard). A durable flashlight.
Chocolate (melts in transit). Alcohol (offensive in Buddhist families). Religious items from your own faith (can cause discomfort). Expensive jewellery (makes the gift exchange uncomfortably asymmetric). Soft toys (not useful).
50 USD total. Split across: a family photograph you took, printed and sent via post; a set of pencil cases and notebooks for each child; a quality kitchen knife from a hardware store. This has warmed more hosts than any expensive option we have seen.
If you read a book about Mongolia on the trip, leave it at the end with your host. Mongolian families read. They value texts in English as language learning material. Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, and In the Empire of Genghis Khan by Stanley Stewart are favourites.
The single most valuable thing you can give a host family is a printed photograph of the visit, sent by post after you return home. We provide mailing instructions and a post-trip reminder. This small follow-through creates lasting relationships. Many repeat guests maintain letter exchanges with their original host families for years.
Do not offer cash directly to host families. It embarrasses everyone. Rara Avis handles all host family payments privately and fairly. If you want to add to that, donate to our Billion Trees programme, which the same families benefit from.