Who are we?

TSEREN TOURS was founded and is run by Tseren Enebish with husband Rik Idema. Tseren is a Mongolian from the country side and graduated with her degree from the Mongolian Arts Academy in 1992. Her nomadic blood flows strongly and has always pushed her to see what is beyond the horizon. Rik first came to Mongolia from The Netherlands in the Spring of 1992 for his two year world cycling tour. He found it to be on of the most untouched countries he had visited. Rik The traveller fell in love with the nomadic spirit of Mongolia.

Rik and Tseren met in Ulaanbaatar where Rik awaited his visa for the next leg of his bike tour. Driven by their desire to travel, they journeyed throughout Mongolia and other Asian and European countries. They love to travel in an individual flexible way giving more attention to the local people and cultures than to the advertised tourist sites. In 1994 they started TSEREN TOURS Company and began to organize tour parties to Mongolia. Their tours are based on their own philosophy of travel not as tourists but as sensitive adventurous explorers. Their first organised tour was a bike tour. Later they organized all other kinds of tours for small groups and for individuals. Sometimes tours are arranged in cooperation with European tour operators. 
Because they have lived both in Mongolia and The Netherlands Rik and Tseren are an outstanding couple promoting positive experiences for visitors and hosts where Mongolian and Western cultures meet each other. Rik and Tseren want to share their awareness and respect for Mongolia - its peoples and places - with you.

Company history 

Tracing our origins and development for you 

Mongolia the place of Romance 

1988 Tseren (born 1970) moves from the small provincial capital Bayanhongor to Ulaan Baatar to study at the Fine Arts Academy. 

1991 This spring Rik (born 1959) quit his job in The Netherlands and starts to fulfill a dream: he leaves for a 2-year bicycle tour through Europe and Asia. 

1992 Tseren and Rik meet each other when Rik visits Mongolia coming from China and is stuck in Ulaanbaatar with difficulties getting his Russian visa and Tseren just finished her studies. 

Mongolia  the place  of Adventure on the Steppe and Gobi 

1993 Rik and Tseren start to travel through Mongolia themselves with Tseren's 3 year old son Nyamka and enjoy the beauty of the Gobi very much. That summer other travelers join them on their next trips, this way taking their first steps in organizing tours for others. 

1994 They organize their first group tour for a Dutch tour operator: a 3-week mountain bike tour through central Mongolia.

In these first years, they work together with another agent, because it is difficult to get all the licenses and permits. Later they register their company under the name Tseren Tours.

In autumn and winter (as in the next years) they travel themselves as backpackers in China and southeast Asia and also in Europe.  

1995  They start to bring other groups of adventure seekers from Europe. 

Mongolia the place of Experience on the Mountain tracks 

1996 They go to the far western provinces to research hiking possibilities in the high Altai mountains so that way they can offer original spectacular itineraries.

1997 They organize their first hiking tour in west Mongolia by request of ex-mountain climbers.

1998  Until 1998 Rik spent the winters alone in The Netherlands, but this year Tseren and Nyamka join him and from this time the family starts to live in two countries but their hearts are in Mongolia. 

Mongolia the place for Diversity for Tseren Tours 

1999 As always Rik and Tseren are guiding the group tours themselves, but off-season still keep busy to discover new areas to show to their clients.

In October Tseren makes her long desired horse tour to the Reindeer people in the taiga near the Russian border. 

2000 In November Tseren travels overland to Holland via Siberia and stays a few weeks with the nomadic Sami in Norway. 

2001 They organize their first Horse treks for groups in the Hanggai mountains and the Khentii mountains. Later other areas follow.  

2002 Tseren Tours organizes for the first time a Fishing tour. In the next years other tours with specialized activities as canoeing and camel treks follow. Also special interest tours like bird watching tours are being organized. 

2003 When Tseren is 5 months pregnant makes a 3-week tour including a 4-day hiking trek around the sacred and snowcapped Otgon Tenger mountain in the Hanggai mountains. Two months later in October, Tseren guides a group of Biologists from The Netherlands and still camps in the snow! 

2004 Until this year Rik and Tseren have other activities besides tourism and live more than half the year in Holland, but from now on they decide to concentrate on the thing they love most: organizing tours and letting others enjoy the beauty of Mongolia.

They open their own Tseren Tours office (before they had their office at home) in City center on the main road, very near the biggest shop of the city, the State Department Store.

In October Tseren travels with her now 9months old son Dalaikhuu to Kazakh area in western Mongolia to see the Eagle Festival, a tour of 18 days and 3800 km. 

Mongolia the place of new Challenges 

2005 In June they move their office to the present and bigger location just east of the State Department Store.

Later that month Tseren Tours organizes two concerts of the famous Inner Mongolian singer Urna in the Opera and Ballet Theatre on her first visit to Mongolia.  

2006 Tseren Tours works together with a foreign publisher on the free  'Mongolia Expat' magazine.

In October and November Tseren travels with her newborn 2 months old son Altaikhuu to the east and southwest Mongolia covering about 3600km.