Mongolia is in the tourism spotlight and making it easier to visit. Reindeer sledding, anyone?

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AP) — With its reindeer sleigh rides, camel racing and stunning landscapes with room to roam, Mongolia is hoping to woo visitors who are truly looking to get away from it all.

Like most countries, its tourism industry was devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has launched a “Welcome to MonGOlia” campaign to win people back. The government has added flights and streamlined the visa process, offering visa-free visits for many countries.

At least 437,000 foreign tourists visited in the first seven months of this year, up 25% over the same period last year, including increasing numbers from Europe, the U.S. and Japan. Visitors from South Korea nearly doubled, thanks in part to the under-four-hour flight.

Despite the gains, Mongolia’s government is still short of its goal of 1 million visitors per year from 2023-2025 to the land of Genghis Khan, which encompassed much of Eurasia in its 13th-century heyday and is now a landlocked nation located between Russia and China.

With a population of 3.3 million people, about half of them living in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, there’s plenty of open space for the adventure tourist to explore, said Egjimaa Battsooj, who works for a tour company. Its customized itineraries include horseback trips and camping excursions with the possibility of staying in gers, the felt-covered dwellings still used by Mongolia’s herders.

There’s little chance of running across private property, so few places are off-limits, she said.

“You don’t need to open a gate, you don’t need to have permission from anyone,” she said, sitting in front of a map of Mongolia with routes marked out with pins and strands of yarn.

“We are kind of like the last truly nomad culture on the whole planet,”