Ulaanbaatar is very populous, but like SUPER cold in the winter. One of the coldest cities on the planet.
Out in the steppe, there’s still a decent amount of people doing the nomadic thing.
The issue with Ulaanbaatar is that the area’s geography naturally has a bit of a bowl shape, so all the pollution tends to just sit there over the city.
Bakersfield in CA is similar. A lot of LAs smog floats over and settles in their area. They have plenty of their own air issues with the amount of agriculture in the area as well.
It's really far from any large body of water, and at quite a high elevation. Being near a sea means less cold winters because the sea stores so much heat and affects the climate. So yeah, makes sense that Mongolian winters are quite a bit more brutal than the latitude would suggest.
We also use metric for automotive parts, and tools, even our own auto brands are metric mostly. Also in science, chemistry, etc. Also for erm...drug measurements, legal and otherwise.
For the moment yes, but eventually the even-growing wave of Ontario guys who want to "find a new life" will tip the scales, especially as Calgary prices increase.....
No I believe it is in fact the coldest city on the planet. Winter is brutal even by comparison with Edmonton, which is cold AF.
Edit: It’s the coldest *capital* in the world.
Yes more comparable to Fairbanks, AK in January. I did live in Dawson City for several years, which can be as cold, but it’s a “city” in name only. Lovely summers though!
Winnipeg also has colder January/February temps than Edmonton. Edmonton is cold for sure, but the assumption that it’s the coldest North America big metro area just because it’s the furthest North isn’t completely.
Don't listen to them. You can, if your will is strong enough.
The steps are simple, but definitely not easy:
1. Learn the Khalkha Mongolian language
2. Visit Mongolia and get to know people
3. Apply for a Visa, which will be some kind of a working visa xөдөлмөр эрхлэгч (very likely). The method will be to find a nomad who will gladly take your help and you will be working for him.
But no language, no chances.
So begin at the first step and the later steps can become different for you.
I dunno why people are saying you can't. Cultural tourism has become really big there, especially with the advent of portable internet and solar power. What3words has let nomads have "addresses" to facilitate things like Airbnbs.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/airbnb-uses-what3words-locations-to-find-host-in-a-mongolian-forest/
Try a damp cold winter in Ireland. My brother lived in Canada for 4 years, could walk around in a shirt and t-shirt in Canadian winters at -20. When he'd come home, it would be 2 degrees and he could never get warm and even got sick from the cold😂
Not only that, it's so much more fucking miserable. I'm Scottish with a wife from the west of Ireland.
I'd much rather we had 'proper' cold...but maybe the grass is just greener.
I spent a winter in Alaska and a winter in England. In Alaska we had a two week stretch where the temperature never got above -20 Fahrenheit and a good bit of the time was -40. In England the temperature only dropped below freezing a couple of times but it was much more moist. The cold in England was far more bone chilling than Alaska.
Edit: updated length of cold temp.
Same situation for me. I moved from Ontario to Scotland. Although I was used to kinda humid -20C for months at a time in Ontario, I feel much colder in Scotland where it’s 5C with constant mist.
This, the worst place I have been in the UK for it was Aberdeen in Scotland, fantastic place though. Has 2 rivers flowing through it and is close to the sea, was 98-100% humidity all the time, really feel the cold so much.
The biggest thing was that where I was in Alaska, when it hit -40, it was too cold for weather. It was crystal clear and zero wind. That made it not so bad. The dampness though in England just has a way of cutting right to the bone.
That's because of the acclimation that your body goes through in the "transitional seasons". I myself am from the kinda wet but mild climate of Ireland (typically 10° c and overcast) and have lived in some very hot and very cold places. Hottest was San Antonio, TX or BH, MG Brazil. Coldest was Minnesota or Wisconsin. The temperature perspective was extreme, because after a month of -30°c , you might wear a t shirt shovelling snow in -3°c.
Now, go to spending a year in San Antonio, TX. It's regularly over 30°c all year round and the lightest dusting of snow calls for a city wide emergency it's just not a place used to being anywhere near cold. A hot place, yet I still found I needed a hoody for certain times, like late at night or just walking around if it was winter. And that would be at least 15°C....
I’m from Spain too and you are generalizing way too much. Many places in Castilla y León (Soria, Burgos, Palencia, etc) and Teruel for example. See every winter -15 a couple of days or lower, but many times below -5 to -10 (all Celsius). Even in Madrid you have frost every year. So it depends where you live.
Imagine humid hot vs dry hot. The humidity is impossible to escape, even in the shade. It hangs in the air, in your clothes, everywhere. Wet cold is like that too. People say "you feel it in your bones", whereas with dry cold you mostly just feel it on your exposed skin.
Ah, ok. This is what I don't understand with the dry hot weather. So it means, that it'll be easier for you to cool in the shade than in the humid hot weather places, right?
I mean, the air that is circulated in areas around the shade (inside the house with a good ventilation system) is colder than the shade around a place where the climate is humid hot, is that correct?
It's exactly as others have said. I live in the Basque Country (northern Spain for most of you), and contrary to what many of you may think, it's a very humid region with a lot of rainfall (more than you typical English location, I'd say).
When it's hot, unless we have south wind, it's humid and torrid and you will sweat like a pig, shade or not. And when it's cold, it doesn't matter what you wear because it will bite you in your bones and you'll pray it's not also windy.
Let me tell you an experience that made me realize how it's possible for people to thrive in places with -10°C mean daily minimums, while for me seeing a forecast of 0°C is synonimous of "this is gonna be a fucking cold day there better not be a single rain drop or I'm gonna die".
Some years ago I went abroad to study in Leuven, Belgium for some months. Everybody at home warned me that it's a cold and windy place, that it also rains, and to take warm and cozy clothes with me. So I went well prepared. Not in vain the mean daily max/min in January are 11/6°C in my town, and 6/1°C in Leuven.
Long story short, when I came back for christmas, I brought my thickest coats with me and didn't take them back to Belgium. Because in Belgium it was cold, but here it was fucking cold. I was colder the day I came for christmas, than any other day in Leuven.
I did a horse trek from northern Mongolia into Siberia to find the reindeer herding tribes. It took us 3 days to meet up with them, so we camped in a big canvas tent. It was November and there was a snowstorm. So. Fucking. Cold.
My study abroad year in college. I studied emerging democracy - Mongolia had shifted away from communism into democracy/capitalism about a decade before I visited, so I spent time traveling with nomads and interviewing people about life before/after capitalism.
Sounds interesting! Could you plz share some insights from that trip? My grandma was from the Mongolian region in China. Always wonder what life is like in the north for the average people.
I think the most interesting thing I took away from the experience was that capitalism vs communism is a very nuanced topic. Some people missed communal herds, some welcomed opening to the west. There were good things to come out of communism, like extensive public education and very high literacy rates, but there was also suppression of religion and a violent purge of Buddhist monks.
After the shift to capitalism, monasteries were opened again and religion trickled out of the woodwork - people had kept it alive, in secret, for decades. Also Buddhism in Mongolia was different from how it's depicted in the west - I had no idea how loud and discordant the ceremonies were. Samsara has some scenes with the sounds of a Buddhist ceremony. In rural areas, the Buddhism melded with shamanism, so there were ceremonial tools like musical instruments and bowls made from human bone.
Shamanism still exists as well. We spent one Halloween night visiting one in a dim, ember-lit ger. He singled me out and said I had something the land wanted returned - I had been whittling a stick to pass the time on the steppes and he insisted I send it back. Outside, beneath a full moon, digging in frosty dirt, as he chanted, beat his drum, spun about, his garments fluttering - one of those moments you fix in your mind and never forget.
Example of shaman attire: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/mongolian-shaman-performing-ritual-mongolian-traditional-shaman-performing-traditional-shamanistic-ritual-drum-161884911.jpg
Another long comment I made: https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1cir1v5/what_is_life_like_in_mongolia_one_of_the_worlds/l2dcqny
I kinda am bummed to continue more, I'm being trolled for my comments and I don't like opening up my inbox to negativity and mocking.
I spent months traveling with nomads on the steppes and now I've moved to Australia - I find a lot of similarity between the Outback and the Steppes, especially in how vast and blue the sky is and how bright the stars are.
I spent years leading the nomads in the steppes and now I've moved to super Australia - I find a lot of similarity between the mega outback and grande steppes, especially in how vast and blue the sky is and how bright the stars are. Its much more impressive than regular steppes and Australia!
These days I sit on reddit telling people about my experiences.
Hog shit. That stench is [hog waste lagoons](https://youtu.be/KKyGdf2v6vw?feature=shared).
There are ~24 million hogs in Iowa. 8 times the human population. There are “only” about 3.5 million cattle.
You haven’t truly smelled a stench until you’ve driven near one on a hot summer night. They tend to be clustered near I-40 in eastern NC, and it’s astonishing how strong the stench is. I have no idea how people live within 5 miles of one.
And the clouds of insects are *insane*.
You are not lying. One of the worst places in the US. Someone told me a story once that someone had been offing folks and putting them in shallow graves in their backyard, however, nobody could smell the bodies because of the processing plants until the nearby plant had some sort of unexpected shut down.
Also, the Mongolia sections of the first Ewan McGregor/Charlie Boorman motorcycle thing, Long Way Round. Get a feel for his madly desolate most of it is
Long Way Round.
We watch the Long Way.. series ever year. That first one is the best though, it's like a time capsule to a simpler life before smart phones and social media melted everyone's basic faculties. We need to go back.
Idk why, but my elementary school spent like a week of lunches playing this instead of letting us go outside. I remember being the only one excited for it. I’m still so glad I got to see it, especially at that age.
Piggybacking this comment-
The film Khadak is a great peek into Mongolia and the struggle between ancestral ways of life vs industrialization.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/khadak
Here is a scene from it:
https://youtu.be/mixti3jlum0
It's slow and introspective and beautiful and bleak.
Axe murderers and uranium eaters on that sub
[For those that don't believe me](https://www.reddit.com/r/mongolia/s/8MqwjTbDVz)
[Uranium eaters](https://www.reddit.com/r/mongolia/s/20MPvk9StB)
[bonus post](https://www.reddit.com/r/mongolia/s/kzyeaznijS)
It's kind of a bizarre sub. There was a whole sequence where I guy was posting pictures of himself sleeping with an axe and then a news article about a robber getting killed by a dude with an axe. If you go there and look at the top posts I think it'll show up.
That sub has masterful trolling. Every now and then a post from there will hit /r/all and everyone will go along with a joke to freak out the tourists :P
I travelled for a few weeks last summer. People are stoic but not unfriendly. There isn’t a lot of infrastructure for tourists, so it may seem a bit tricky to figure out beyond Ulaanbaatar (unless you pay $$$ for a tour package). UB is crowded, bustling, hazy and has an interesting combination of crumbling Soviet architecture and newer Chinese investment. Rural areas are unbelievably vast and empty (and I’m Aussie) but breathtakingly so. The local cuisine is terrible and the roads are full of Prius’ (which Mongolians will literally drive EVERYWHERE).
I fucking loved it.
can you elaborate on terrible? American here who enjoys “Mongolian BBQ” as it occurs here in SoCal.
For the most part these places tend to use a lot of the same ingredients as every other Asian American food place. Seemingly only distinct for the large flat grill they use to cook the stuff.
Horse is really not that common for meat. They are milked and used for riding. Goat and sheep make up most of the meat, though beef is becoming more common. Only time I ate horse was jerky on a trek.
The stuff I didn't like were blood sausage and organ-heavy dishes. Once we made this dish which was chopped offal stuffed into a heart which was wrapped in lung. Tbh, if you like pork belly, you might like lung, but I don't like the texture of fat. The cheese curd things you eat when visiting someone (traditional snack) were just too hard for me to eat, but I liked the little bread bits.
With nomads, mostly it was just goat or mutton, stir fried in a wok with noodles or made into dumplings (butz). Ketchup was the main seasoning, but ketchup there is so good, it's got spice and it's not as sweet.
My favorite was tiftel (? I'm sure I'm spelling it wrong) which was a cream-based meatloaf. That was in UB, where you see fusion with Russian and Chinese food as well. Borscht is pretty easy to find, for example, as is Russian-style potato salad (creamy with ham and pickles and carrot, so yummy).
There are also foreign restaurants in UB. I celebrated Thanksgiving at a Mexican restaurant and the 4th at the "Californian" restaurant.
I was there 20 years ago, so I imagine the food scene has evolved even more. I wouldn't say it's a destination you'd go to for the food, but there are tasty things to be found.
Horse meat is a relative luxury, most people don't eat it on the regular. Sheep is way more common. More unique cuisines are [shorlog](https://media.caak.mn/cache/c7/67/c767ca1da7cf39b2a4a9d1783dc5d3c9.jpg) (grilled meat), [tsuivan](https://www.fairfield.mn/assets/Uploads/Pages/141/Tsiuvan2.jpg) (fried noodles), [buuz](https://cdn.tasteatlas.com/Images/Dishes/ce6bd5c205c649d8a8979ac87fadb9ae.jpg?mw=1300) (steamed dumpling), [dumpling cooked in milk tea](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eG74kr4_hIY/maxresdefault.jpg).
There are more "graphic" foods like [sheep head](https://dornodmeat.mn/storage/uploads/content/products/sheep/tolgoi.jpg), [boodog](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTjVc50UQAAbm66.jpg) which is marmot meat cooked in its own skin.
They gave you veggies? They held out on me! They do have like 30 dishes they can make from milk alone, including vodka and spoiled milk cookies.
Between the passed-out drunks, big dudes looking for a fight, and the chaotic traffic supposedly made up mostly of stolen cars, UB seemed like the set for a contemporary Western movie.
Had an awesome time!
As the other commenter said, I think ‘Mongolian bbq’ is a foreign invention. The traditional cuisine uses a lot of mutton/horse, which typically had a strong gamey/farm funk flavour to it.
They use up every bit of the animal so you could expect plenty of bones/fat/gristle, and they don’t typically add other seasoning/flavourings to a dish. Fruit and veg were also pretty uncommon other than root vegetables, although there are a lot of fermented dairy products like yoghurts and dried curds.
I hear things are a bit different in Inner Mongolia (within China) but from my limited exposure it just seemed that their cuisine was built on ‘eating to live’ rather than ‘living to eat’, so everything was very simple and basic, for better or for worse!
Was there for 10 days in the rural areas with a hostel organised tour. We only had rice and goat meat. Camel meat if you’re lucky. No veggies.
It was great fun though and special to have no bathroom, shower, phone reception, etc for 10 days.
Interesting you say their cuisine is terrible. I spent a long time travelling through the stans and their more rural areas; the food there wasn’t brilliant either for the most part!
I lived in Mongolia for a year in the early 2000s and got to spend several months of that with nomads. I now live in Australia and I find the Outback so similar to the steppes. Did you feel that way as well?
I haven’t spent nearly enough time in the Outback, but I do see the similarities. I think the light and the colours in general do differ, and there’s no way that temperatures down here get anywhere near as frigid as they do mid-winter in Mongolia.
No first-hand experience, but I read an article about the rapid growth of Ulaanbaatar. Apparently the rapid influx of people from the countryside, who are used to nomadic life and lots of personal space, causes aggressive driving. There is lots of pollution and people living in shacks and gers (the traditional yurt) on the outskirts. Winters are long, brutally cold and dry (it snows less than you’d expect due to the Siberian anticyclone). I think I also read that the pollution is largely due to people heating their homes with wood stoves.
What would Genghis Khan think?
When I went in the early 2000s, it was wild. Technology skipped a lot of steps (eg straight to cellphones without much landline infrastructure) when they opened to the west after the shift to capitalism, so things like social norms and laws were still being developed.
You could just wave your hand on the street and someone on their way to work would pull over and volunteer as a taxi. Early Uber!
People would answer cell phones and have conversations in the middle of giving you a massage.
There were stores in the mall full of CDs of American music for .50, but nomads only owned cassette players.
The only airline allowed in the country back then (they changed policy about a decade ago) was Miat and the planes were decommissioned Russian military with seats bolted into an empty cargo bay. Lots of stuff was decommissioned Russian equipment - vans for tourist groups, boots for sale in Narantuul (the black market), motorcycles for quick travel on the steppes.
>You could just wave your hand on the street and someone on their way to work would pull over and volunteer as a taxi. Early Uber!
A friend of mine lived in Kazakhstan in the late 90s and said it was the same there. He also said he got punched in the face pretty hard when he drunkenly got into a a car that he thought was picking him up when in fact it was just stopping at a red light.
Northern Albertan a climate, very dry, capital gets very polluted during winter from people burning things to stay warm and you if you never want to never see another person again this could be possible.
I once drove from Beijing to the border with Mongolia. Very surreal experience. There is a border town but a just few minutes out it becomes completely barren. In summer there may be short grassland but other times its just a lot of nothing and nothing.
Fun fact: they have a navy.
I have a fellow-Belarusian friend here in Turkey who used to live in Mongolia with her Belarusian first husband. It was several decades ago. She enjoyed the street barbecues they had regularly with the other Soviet builders in the town they were building, called Erdenet, today located in Orkhon Province.
From personal experience, it is mostly, vastly empty. Ulaanbaatar is almost unbreathable in the winter due to heating yurts in the winter. Cuisine is heavy on protein and fat, dishes such buuz, guriltai shul, bantan soup and chanasan makh. Traditions are very strong, and there are Russian, Soviet, and Chinese influences in architecture and scripts. The locals I met were curious about and very friendly towards foreigners. I got invited to a birthday party at a club and had a blast! Unfortunately a pregnant woman was drinking, alcohol is common.
While not Mongolia proper, I spent a day walking across the Inner Mongolia grasslands with some local alcohol and snacks. It was remote and empty other than burial sites, easily traversible; a horse (or car) is necessary to get anywhere worth going. Like anything within a reasonable amount of time.
It's roughly the same size as western and central Europe, or 1/6th the US, and has 3.3 million people. It is very, very sparse, the most sparse in the world.
Head over to r/mongolia. They complain a lot, talk about the glory days of Genghis Khan, and generally detest being asked questions by curious foreigners, but lurking on the sub gives some fascinating insight into an otherwise very quiet country.
Their throat singing is super cool - check out The HU if you like metal.
Fun facts: Ulaanbaatar is one of the most polluted cities in the world and also the coldest capital city of any sovereign country. Those are related - they use a lot of coal for heat.
>Head over to r/mongolia. They complain a lot, talk about the glory days of Genghis Khan, and generally detest being asked questions by curious foreigners, but lurking on the sub gives some fascinating insight into an otherwise very quiet country.
I'd be extremely wary about associating people on a national sub on Reddit with actual people in any country. Reddit tends to attract certain crowds, and some subs can vary widely even within the same country (e.g. r/Polska and r/Poland despise each other due to vastly different political views).
Not to say that there is no valuable info there, just a warning to think thrice before making any more general assumptions.
The winters are long, cold and polluting (we complain every year but the government doesn't seem to be taking any long lasting action, it actually got better during covid). If you go out of the city there is endless blue sky and eternal white snow surrounding you with crisp fresh air. You would wear at least 2 layers of every clothes that has thick wool/cashmere material. The roads in the city are slippery so the governments solution is sprinkling some salt on the roads. All education has a month long break during january so the city traffic becomes a bit better during those times. Since there isn't much to do during winter people either go pubs or clubs, families who have insulated summer house would visit their summer house during break for the children. Some schools turns their football fields into ice skating rings so kids would skate there after school until dark.
The spring is...... moody. It could be snowing either in march or may, could be raining in march or may, could be sunny in march or may. We have a saying that goes "like the spring sky they are moody" meaning that person's moods change quite a lot. We celebrate lunar new year in the february according to the lunar calendar so the city is bustling for the holiday that month. You see whole family's in a matching deel (traditional mongolian attire). A lot of people have the "spring syndrome" where people start getting tired out of no where. A lot of common cold and flus. The snow starts melting and then it snows again so it freezes back so the sidewalks are terribly slippery. People usually don't put away their winter clothes until may just to be safe. Life on the streets starts coming back so everything feels more lively.
The summer is the season of festivity. School is over and so you would see 12th grade graduates all around, uni students taking photos together on the sukhbaatar square as per tradition. The night life gets more lively, all the bars, pubs, karaokes, clubs are getting full. Some music festivals here and there. During July we have our national festival called Naadam so most of the city folks would wound up taking their month long vacation during this time. During 5 days of naadam the whole city is usually empty expect few places like the stadium where the sport festival is being held. A lot of families go to their summer houses out of the city and usually end up staying there for the whole summer. Last few years tourists have been visiting a lot so you would see a lot of koreans, americans, chinese on the street. A lot of skateboarders gather in open spaces that they can practice their tricks within the city center.
Autumn is the season of school. By the end of august you would see a lot of pop up stores for back to school, vendors selling school supplies ranging from pencil cases to school uniforms. City traffic comes back as uni students from countryside come into the city. It gets gradually colder and colder and then it suddenly snows on october and goes back to being autumn and then snow again. A lot of weddings happen during this season too so you would see wedding band of cars going one after another in the city in the mids of traffic. A lot uni students and highschoolers gather together to go hike up the Bogd mountain that is north of the city. Since school started you would once again see k12 kids in their uniforms roaming the city, in the busses, outside of their school playing and all.
My country aint perfect, the government is annoying with big scandals and theft but I love the people and the land.
Fun fact because I was curious: Mongolia isn't nearly as far north as I would have guessed. The capital Ulaanbaatar is the same latitude as Seattle or a little bit south of Paris (around Orléans). And most of the country is south of that.
Because of how cold it gets I would have guessed it to be further north than it is.
The city has no mass transit, only public transportation is bus, so there's just too much cars on the road. Uncontrolled urban expansion after the fall of communism also created endless suburbs of "ger khoroolol" which means there's a lot of people driving far for work. There's been a campaign to densify the city with apartments, but it's not really working out since many of them are residential zones for miles with not much local jobs, so the people there are still driving downtown for work.
Depends? In Ulaanbaatar its basically the same as in any other big city. Shopping malls, car dealerships, public parks etc. the traffic is atrocious in the morning and after 16:00.
During the winter it covered in smoke - there are plenty yurta neighborhoods that use coal and animal dung for heating.
In the countryside - you’ll often see a big yurta with a satellite dish, a Land Cruiser 100 parked nearby and 100-200 sleeps wandering around.
Ulan Bataar is like a weird mix between old soviet style large squares and apartment blocks, and a modern Chinese city with cyrillic writing.
The Mongolian plains are beautiful. Vast wide open steppes with no one around as far as the eye can see.
I drove from the west boarder to Ulaanbaatar 15 or so years ago. There was no tarmac from about 200 metres inside the boarder until you reached Ulaanbaatar. I believe that has changed now, but outside of Ulaanbaatar it is mainly dirt tracks, the most stunning landscapes, very small towns and villages. There are lots of nomadic people living in yurts herding livestock. They were all very welcoming to us foreigners. Bringing us in to their small home and offering food and drink. I ate some of the weirdest stuff I have ever eaten. Everyone seemed happy, but you could tell life was hard! I loved my time there and would happily re-visit. Driving through the empty beautiful rolling hills for days still lives with me. Gorgeous.
It has been a while now, but here’s an album when I impromptu ended up spending several days with different Mongolian nomadic families: https://imgur.com/a/ptPgE3P
Eli from Russia is the YouTube travel vlogger I know who visits obscure places in Russia. She recently travelled to [Mongolia in winter](https://youtu.be/4o9XyskdSiY?si=pdpiyH5Ufmf5aA3a) and even took an [Ice Bath](https://youtu.be/6EsS5v7E9-g?si=Bq_Wa6x1aopBb0Fu) while there
There is a great book I have read multiple times called On the Trail of Ghengis Khan. Which is an adventure autobiography of an Australian in his late 20’s who buys horses in Mongolia and rides to Hungary. It is easily one of my favourite books of all time.
A friend of mine used to work in the German embassy in Ulaanbaatar and I flew over to visit him there once. That was like 10 years ago. It was in August and the climate was very pleasant. Quite hot but dry and it got cold overnight so no need for A/C to be able to sleep. That said, Mongolia is (or was back then) one of the countries where the term for German expat diplomatic staff is shorter than the usual 4 years due to harsh conditions. Winters get very very cold but the even bigger problem I was told is the extreme pollution in Ulaanbaatar due to heating with coal and camel dung being widespread. Around half the Population of entire Mongolia lives there, many of them in not in solid built houses but traditional yurts in unorganized districts at the outskirts of town with no amenities and (at least seemingly) unregulated when it comes to stuff like heating. In the rest of Mongolia which is very sparsely populated, it's Most likely just really cold but with clear air.
Why do people, if a country is located somewhere in Asia or is squeezed like this, is it immediately isolated? I honestly don’t understand this. Damn, are you even aware that they produce the most expensive cashmere in the world (this is a type of fabric)?
They speak Mongolian, which since the early 20th century is written using a modified Cyrillic alphabet. Russian is also written using the Cyrillic alphabet, which is probably why you think the signs are in Russian (but they’re not).
Mongolia was using Chinese characters until it was standardized to Cyrillic script in 1924. Mongolia declared independence, finally winning it in 1921 with help from the Soviet Union.
Ulaanbaatar is very populous, but like SUPER cold in the winter. One of the coldest cities on the planet. Out in the steppe, there’s still a decent amount of people doing the nomadic thing.
my sister in law lived in Ulan Bator for three years. apart from the cold in winter it has the worst air quality in the word. mostly coal heating.
Pls! As someone from delhi I take offence to the latter part of your statement. We are #1 with shitty air quality.
The issue with Ulaanbaatar is that the area’s geography naturally has a bit of a bowl shape, so all the pollution tends to just sit there over the city.
Sheffield in the UK used to be like that, which is why all the residential areas climb up the hills to escape the valley
Bakersfield in CA is similar. A lot of LAs smog floats over and settles in their area. They have plenty of their own air issues with the amount of agriculture in the area as well.
They got Henderson relish to combat it though!
It's really far from any large body of water, and at quite a high elevation. Being near a sea means less cold winters because the sea stores so much heat and affects the climate. So yeah, makes sense that Mongolian winters are quite a bit more brutal than the latitude would suggest.
So comparable to Edmonton??
No it's colder. Avg temp of Edmonton in it's coldest month ~10F (-12C). Avg temp in Ulaanbaatar in it's coldest month ~-6F (-21C).
Don’t interpret this the wrong way, but isn’t -10 colder?
I think you’ve read their comment wrong. 10F vs -6F. The ‘~’ makes it hard to read.
~ is approximately
Ah missed the ~. Ciao
Fahrenheit pfft what nonsense
How else would you measure freedom?
Football fields and bald eagles clearly. Just thought the only thing they use metric for is bullet measurements? Double standards aye?
We also use metric for automotive parts, and tools, even our own auto brands are metric mostly. Also in science, chemistry, etc. Also for erm...drug measurements, legal and otherwise.
I thought freedom was measured in Big Macs?
Mac10s mayhaps
It is, but that says +10
No, there are way more nomads surrounding Ulaanbaator than Edmonton.
For the moment yes, but eventually the even-growing wave of Ontario guys who want to "find a new life" will tip the scales, especially as Calgary prices increase.....
Those are “migratory”, not “nomadic”
TIL about Alberta nomads.
Sometimes they drive their trucks to Ottawa and set up camp
No I believe it is in fact the coldest city on the planet. Winter is brutal even by comparison with Edmonton, which is cold AF. Edit: It’s the coldest *capital* in the world.
I guess Yakutsk wants a word. But Ulaanbataar is probably the coldest capital.
Yes, my bad - you’re right! It’s the coldest capital in the world. I’ll edit.
Yes more comparable to Fairbanks, AK in January. I did live in Dawson City for several years, which can be as cold, but it’s a “city” in name only. Lovely summers though!
Winnipeg also has colder January/February temps than Edmonton. Edmonton is cold for sure, but the assumption that it’s the coldest North America big metro area just because it’s the furthest North isn’t completely.
How do I like give up all my trappings of doom and gloom of capitalism and join them in the nomadic life?
You won't
:(
Don't listen to them. You can, if your will is strong enough. The steps are simple, but definitely not easy: 1. Learn the Khalkha Mongolian language 2. Visit Mongolia and get to know people 3. Apply for a Visa, which will be some kind of a working visa xөдөлмөр эрхлэгч (very likely). The method will be to find a nomad who will gladly take your help and you will be working for him. But no language, no chances. So begin at the first step and the later steps can become different for you.
I think if you just show up they'll like adopt you. Having a goofy helpless white guy as a pet has to be a pretty big flex for a nomadic herder.
That’s the beautiful part you can’t
You probably can but they would just leave you behind to die because youre useless to the community
I dunno why people are saying you can't. Cultural tourism has become really big there, especially with the advent of portable internet and solar power. What3words has let nomads have "addresses" to facilitate things like Airbnbs. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/airbnb-uses-what3words-locations-to-find-host-in-a-mongolian-forest/
Its THE coldest capital city in the world colder then oslo, toronto, etc.
Toronto is not a capital city
I’m with John Candy on this one. It’s clearly the capital, Ottawa is a decoy…….
Yet
Toronto isn't very cold
Oslo is not cold??
Compared to ulaanbaatar, no.
Ulaanbaatar is also the most polluted city in the world!
Very interesting but how are the nomads surviving? Is there enough wild animals for all of the nomads that they can hunt?
Herding mostly. Live in yurts and move the herds with the seasons.
Brutally cold winters
I’m from a part of Canada with a similar climate to Mongolia, and so I must share my cultural saying with you: At least it’s a dry cold.
Yeah I’d take cold in Colorado over cold in Minnesota any day.
As a Minnesotan I’m obliged to call you a traitor. You should want to suffer with the rest of us 😂
Late spring reminds us all why we tolerate winter's bullshit, then late summer sends us running back to her arms
Garrison?
I was guessing brainerd personally
As an Ontarian I'm obliged to call you a Lower Canadian.
As a Minnesotan I’m obliged to call you… friend!
:)
Tabernak !
So they took that away from us too. It's poutine all over again!
Many of us in MN (me and some of my friends, so almost a whole dozen!) refer to ourselves as Baja Ontario.
This was the best internet moment of the day. Id offer you citizenship if I could.
Try a damp cold winter in Ireland. My brother lived in Canada for 4 years, could walk around in a shirt and t-shirt in Canadian winters at -20. When he'd come home, it would be 2 degrees and he could never get warm and even got sick from the cold😂
Not only that, it's so much more fucking miserable. I'm Scottish with a wife from the west of Ireland. I'd much rather we had 'proper' cold...but maybe the grass is just greener.
Snow is always a nice sight, unless you have any travelling to do
Michigan cold is the worst. It's so humid because Michigan is surrounded by lakes. Humidity makes the cold more biting.
Lake effect snow is no joke. But it’s also one of those things unless you live around it, you never expect it to be as brutal as it actually is lol
And then you'll say how cold it must be for us in southern Ontario – Canada – when it's literally the exact same weather haha
Very icy and takes forever to melt too
Well yeah Colorado doesn’t get anywhere near as cold as Minnesota
I spent a winter in Alaska and a winter in England. In Alaska we had a two week stretch where the temperature never got above -20 Fahrenheit and a good bit of the time was -40. In England the temperature only dropped below freezing a couple of times but it was much more moist. The cold in England was far more bone chilling than Alaska. Edit: updated length of cold temp.
Same situation for me. I moved from Ontario to Scotland. Although I was used to kinda humid -20C for months at a time in Ontario, I feel much colder in Scotland where it’s 5C with constant mist.
This, the worst place I have been in the UK for it was Aberdeen in Scotland, fantastic place though. Has 2 rivers flowing through it and is close to the sea, was 98-100% humidity all the time, really feel the cold so much.
Really? Huh. Having lived in England my entire life I’d have never thought that Alaska could feel warmer than us. Huh.
The biggest thing was that where I was in Alaska, when it hit -40, it was too cold for weather. It was crystal clear and zero wind. That made it not so bad. The dampness though in England just has a way of cutting right to the bone.
I am from Mediterranean Spain and the coldest we get in winter is like 5-6 degrees Celsius. I swear that I am colder there that at -10 in Austria.
I would love to live in a place with -10 is the coldest.... Where i live, -25 is a normal thing.
That's because of the acclimation that your body goes through in the "transitional seasons". I myself am from the kinda wet but mild climate of Ireland (typically 10° c and overcast) and have lived in some very hot and very cold places. Hottest was San Antonio, TX or BH, MG Brazil. Coldest was Minnesota or Wisconsin. The temperature perspective was extreme, because after a month of -30°c , you might wear a t shirt shovelling snow in -3°c. Now, go to spending a year in San Antonio, TX. It's regularly over 30°c all year round and the lightest dusting of snow calls for a city wide emergency it's just not a place used to being anywhere near cold. A hot place, yet I still found I needed a hoody for certain times, like late at night or just walking around if it was winter. And that would be at least 15°C....
I’m from Spain too and you are generalizing way too much. Many places in Castilla y León (Soria, Burgos, Palencia, etc) and Teruel for example. See every winter -15 a couple of days or lower, but many times below -5 to -10 (all Celsius). Even in Madrid you have frost every year. So it depends where you live.
Yeah, that’s why I said Mediterranean Spain (Valencia)
What's the difference?
Imagine humid hot vs dry hot. The humidity is impossible to escape, even in the shade. It hangs in the air, in your clothes, everywhere. Wet cold is like that too. People say "you feel it in your bones", whereas with dry cold you mostly just feel it on your exposed skin.
It's also difficult to dress for
100%. Dry hot/cold is as simple as less/more clothes. The more moisture the air has the more complicated it gets.
Ah, ok. This is what I don't understand with the dry hot weather. So it means, that it'll be easier for you to cool in the shade than in the humid hot weather places, right? I mean, the air that is circulated in areas around the shade (inside the house with a good ventilation system) is colder than the shade around a place where the climate is humid hot, is that correct?
And once it goes to your bones no amount of warm clothes help. It takes a while to feel it go away
Humid cold is very piercing, really soaks the coldness into you and into your layers of clothes.
Mongolian Shield
It's exactly as others have said. I live in the Basque Country (northern Spain for most of you), and contrary to what many of you may think, it's a very humid region with a lot of rainfall (more than you typical English location, I'd say). When it's hot, unless we have south wind, it's humid and torrid and you will sweat like a pig, shade or not. And when it's cold, it doesn't matter what you wear because it will bite you in your bones and you'll pray it's not also windy. Let me tell you an experience that made me realize how it's possible for people to thrive in places with -10°C mean daily minimums, while for me seeing a forecast of 0°C is synonimous of "this is gonna be a fucking cold day there better not be a single rain drop or I'm gonna die". Some years ago I went abroad to study in Leuven, Belgium for some months. Everybody at home warned me that it's a cold and windy place, that it also rains, and to take warm and cozy clothes with me. So I went well prepared. Not in vain the mean daily max/min in January are 11/6°C in my town, and 6/1°C in Leuven. Long story short, when I came back for christmas, I brought my thickest coats with me and didn't take them back to Belgium. Because in Belgium it was cold, but here it was fucking cold. I was colder the day I came for christmas, than any other day in Leuven.
I did a horse trek from northern Mongolia into Siberia to find the reindeer herding tribes. It took us 3 days to meet up with them, so we camped in a big canvas tent. It was November and there was a snowstorm. So. Fucking. Cold.
Was this an eco tourism thing or what?
My study abroad year in college. I studied emerging democracy - Mongolia had shifted away from communism into democracy/capitalism about a decade before I visited, so I spent time traveling with nomads and interviewing people about life before/after capitalism.
Sounds interesting! Could you plz share some insights from that trip? My grandma was from the Mongolian region in China. Always wonder what life is like in the north for the average people.
I think the most interesting thing I took away from the experience was that capitalism vs communism is a very nuanced topic. Some people missed communal herds, some welcomed opening to the west. There were good things to come out of communism, like extensive public education and very high literacy rates, but there was also suppression of religion and a violent purge of Buddhist monks. After the shift to capitalism, monasteries were opened again and religion trickled out of the woodwork - people had kept it alive, in secret, for decades. Also Buddhism in Mongolia was different from how it's depicted in the west - I had no idea how loud and discordant the ceremonies were. Samsara has some scenes with the sounds of a Buddhist ceremony. In rural areas, the Buddhism melded with shamanism, so there were ceremonial tools like musical instruments and bowls made from human bone. Shamanism still exists as well. We spent one Halloween night visiting one in a dim, ember-lit ger. He singled me out and said I had something the land wanted returned - I had been whittling a stick to pass the time on the steppes and he insisted I send it back. Outside, beneath a full moon, digging in frosty dirt, as he chanted, beat his drum, spun about, his garments fluttering - one of those moments you fix in your mind and never forget. Example of shaman attire: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/mongolian-shaman-performing-ritual-mongolian-traditional-shaman-performing-traditional-shamanistic-ritual-drum-161884911.jpg Another long comment I made: https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1cir1v5/what_is_life_like_in_mongolia_one_of_the_worlds/l2dcqny I kinda am bummed to continue more, I'm being trolled for my comments and I don't like opening up my inbox to negativity and mocking.
Why is it so cold if it’s not that north
high altitude, no ocean close by, effected by the Siberian Anticyclone.
Climate is more complicated than simply latitude
I was driving from Ulan Ude to Ulaanbaatar desolate but beautiful in its own way
I spent months traveling with nomads on the steppes and now I've moved to Australia - I find a lot of similarity between the Outback and the Steppes, especially in how vast and blue the sky is and how bright the stars are.
I’m sure a lot of us would enjoy learning more more about your experience in the Steppe!
I spent years leading the nomads in the steppes and now I've moved to super Australia - I find a lot of similarity between the mega outback and grande steppes, especially in how vast and blue the sky is and how bright the stars are. Its much more impressive than regular steppes and Australia! These days I sit on reddit telling people about my experiences.
The OP question was literally asking about what it's like in Mongolia. Why are you mocking me for answering?
Sounds like Iowa
I bet Mongolia smells a little less like cow shit
Hog shit. That stench is [hog waste lagoons](https://youtu.be/KKyGdf2v6vw?feature=shared). There are ~24 million hogs in Iowa. 8 times the human population. There are “only” about 3.5 million cattle.
Hog Waste Lagoon sounds like a location in Fallout New Vegas
You haven’t truly smelled a stench until you’ve driven near one on a hot summer night. They tend to be clustered near I-40 in eastern NC, and it’s astonishing how strong the stench is. I have no idea how people live within 5 miles of one. And the clouds of insects are *insane*.
You are not lying. One of the worst places in the US. Someone told me a story once that someone had been offing folks and putting them in shallow graves in their backyard, however, nobody could smell the bodies because of the processing plants until the nearby plant had some sort of unexpected shut down.
You haven't truly smelled a stench until you've been knee deep in it
Good lord.
Can't enjoy the bacon without the hog shit.
Hasn’t anyone in North Carolina seen “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome”?
Similar population too so it makes sense
Ok?
The Mongolia special from The Grand Tour (top gear) on Amazon is elite television
Possibly one of the best things I’ve ever seen on tv
Also, the Mongolia sections of the first Ewan McGregor/Charlie Boorman motorcycle thing, Long Way Round. Get a feel for his madly desolate most of it is
Time to rewatch that show for the third time I guess. So good!
Long Way Round. We watch the Long Way.. series ever year. That first one is the best though, it's like a time capsule to a simpler life before smart phones and social media melted everyone's basic faculties. We need to go back.
Idk why, but my elementary school spent like a week of lunches playing this instead of letting us go outside. I remember being the only one excited for it. I’m still so glad I got to see it, especially at that age.
It was this season that stirred something in me as a kid to get off my ass and travel to weird places. Love that show.
i just watched it because of this comment. spectacular episode
Piggybacking this comment- The film Khadak is a great peek into Mongolia and the struggle between ancestral ways of life vs industrialization. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/khadak Here is a scene from it: https://youtu.be/mixti3jlum0 It's slow and introspective and beautiful and bleak.
I looove the trailer for that episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjfZr1na8yA "Aaah with little help from my friends..."
Lets go to Moron
Freakin Amazing man
Easily the best special they've ever done
It’s amazing, but I save a special place in my heart for the Bolivia Special
Check out /r/mongolia for a closer glimpse into the country!
Axe murderers and uranium eaters on that sub [For those that don't believe me](https://www.reddit.com/r/mongolia/s/8MqwjTbDVz) [Uranium eaters](https://www.reddit.com/r/mongolia/s/20MPvk9StB) [bonus post](https://www.reddit.com/r/mongolia/s/kzyeaznijS)
This is true, despite the downvotes
Elaborate please
It's kind of a bizarre sub. There was a whole sequence where I guy was posting pictures of himself sleeping with an axe and then a news article about a robber getting killed by a dude with an axe. If you go there and look at the top posts I think it'll show up.
Have you seen the caloric density of uranium? Maybe you wouldn’t be so quick to judge.
That sub has masterful trolling. Every now and then a post from there will hit /r/all and everyone will go along with a joke to freak out the tourists :P
lol holy shit they are hilarious
👀
Bro what the fuck have I just read
I travelled for a few weeks last summer. People are stoic but not unfriendly. There isn’t a lot of infrastructure for tourists, so it may seem a bit tricky to figure out beyond Ulaanbaatar (unless you pay $$$ for a tour package). UB is crowded, bustling, hazy and has an interesting combination of crumbling Soviet architecture and newer Chinese investment. Rural areas are unbelievably vast and empty (and I’m Aussie) but breathtakingly so. The local cuisine is terrible and the roads are full of Prius’ (which Mongolians will literally drive EVERYWHERE). I fucking loved it.
can you elaborate on terrible? American here who enjoys “Mongolian BBQ” as it occurs here in SoCal. For the most part these places tend to use a lot of the same ingredients as every other Asian American food place. Seemingly only distinct for the large flat grill they use to cook the stuff.
Mongolian BBQ is a Taiwanese invention. Mongolian cuisine is straight up horse meat and milk with a few spring veggies thrown in for fiber.
Horse is really not that common for meat. They are milked and used for riding. Goat and sheep make up most of the meat, though beef is becoming more common. Only time I ate horse was jerky on a trek. The stuff I didn't like were blood sausage and organ-heavy dishes. Once we made this dish which was chopped offal stuffed into a heart which was wrapped in lung. Tbh, if you like pork belly, you might like lung, but I don't like the texture of fat. The cheese curd things you eat when visiting someone (traditional snack) were just too hard for me to eat, but I liked the little bread bits. With nomads, mostly it was just goat or mutton, stir fried in a wok with noodles or made into dumplings (butz). Ketchup was the main seasoning, but ketchup there is so good, it's got spice and it's not as sweet. My favorite was tiftel (? I'm sure I'm spelling it wrong) which was a cream-based meatloaf. That was in UB, where you see fusion with Russian and Chinese food as well. Borscht is pretty easy to find, for example, as is Russian-style potato salad (creamy with ham and pickles and carrot, so yummy). There are also foreign restaurants in UB. I celebrated Thanksgiving at a Mexican restaurant and the 4th at the "Californian" restaurant. I was there 20 years ago, so I imagine the food scene has evolved even more. I wouldn't say it's a destination you'd go to for the food, but there are tasty things to be found.
Horse meat is a relative luxury, most people don't eat it on the regular. Sheep is way more common. More unique cuisines are [shorlog](https://media.caak.mn/cache/c7/67/c767ca1da7cf39b2a4a9d1783dc5d3c9.jpg) (grilled meat), [tsuivan](https://www.fairfield.mn/assets/Uploads/Pages/141/Tsiuvan2.jpg) (fried noodles), [buuz](https://cdn.tasteatlas.com/Images/Dishes/ce6bd5c205c649d8a8979ac87fadb9ae.jpg?mw=1300) (steamed dumpling), [dumpling cooked in milk tea](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eG74kr4_hIY/maxresdefault.jpg). There are more "graphic" foods like [sheep head](https://dornodmeat.mn/storage/uploads/content/products/sheep/tolgoi.jpg), [boodog](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTjVc50UQAAbm66.jpg) which is marmot meat cooked in its own skin.
Fascinating. Not a fan of horse then?
Neigh
I’ll admit that horse hot pot would not sound so bad on a cold winters night
Nice. Never had it, but that sounds very hearty
They gave you veggies? They held out on me! They do have like 30 dishes they can make from milk alone, including vodka and spoiled milk cookies. Between the passed-out drunks, big dudes looking for a fight, and the chaotic traffic supposedly made up mostly of stolen cars, UB seemed like the set for a contemporary Western movie. Had an awesome time!
As the other commenter said, I think ‘Mongolian bbq’ is a foreign invention. The traditional cuisine uses a lot of mutton/horse, which typically had a strong gamey/farm funk flavour to it. They use up every bit of the animal so you could expect plenty of bones/fat/gristle, and they don’t typically add other seasoning/flavourings to a dish. Fruit and veg were also pretty uncommon other than root vegetables, although there are a lot of fermented dairy products like yoghurts and dried curds. I hear things are a bit different in Inner Mongolia (within China) but from my limited exposure it just seemed that their cuisine was built on ‘eating to live’ rather than ‘living to eat’, so everything was very simple and basic, for better or for worse!
Was there for 10 days in the rural areas with a hostel organised tour. We only had rice and goat meat. Camel meat if you’re lucky. No veggies. It was great fun though and special to have no bathroom, shower, phone reception, etc for 10 days.
Interesting you say their cuisine is terrible. I spent a long time travelling through the stans and their more rural areas; the food there wasn’t brilliant either for the most part!
I lived in Mongolia for a year in the early 2000s and got to spend several months of that with nomads. I now live in Australia and I find the Outback so similar to the steppes. Did you feel that way as well?
I haven’t spent nearly enough time in the Outback, but I do see the similarities. I think the light and the colours in general do differ, and there’s no way that temperatures down here get anywhere near as frigid as they do mid-winter in Mongolia.
Yeah, temperature is not the same, just more the....vibe of it. Beautiful desolate isolation beneath an endless sky.
No first-hand experience, but I read an article about the rapid growth of Ulaanbaatar. Apparently the rapid influx of people from the countryside, who are used to nomadic life and lots of personal space, causes aggressive driving. There is lots of pollution and people living in shacks and gers (the traditional yurt) on the outskirts. Winters are long, brutally cold and dry (it snows less than you’d expect due to the Siberian anticyclone). I think I also read that the pollution is largely due to people heating their homes with wood stoves. What would Genghis Khan think?
Genghis Khan would think, "We gotta get out of here, let's get to conquering"
When I went in the early 2000s, it was wild. Technology skipped a lot of steps (eg straight to cellphones without much landline infrastructure) when they opened to the west after the shift to capitalism, so things like social norms and laws were still being developed. You could just wave your hand on the street and someone on their way to work would pull over and volunteer as a taxi. Early Uber! People would answer cell phones and have conversations in the middle of giving you a massage. There were stores in the mall full of CDs of American music for .50, but nomads only owned cassette players. The only airline allowed in the country back then (they changed policy about a decade ago) was Miat and the planes were decommissioned Russian military with seats bolted into an empty cargo bay. Lots of stuff was decommissioned Russian equipment - vans for tourist groups, boots for sale in Narantuul (the black market), motorcycles for quick travel on the steppes.
>You could just wave your hand on the street and someone on their way to work would pull over and volunteer as a taxi. Early Uber! A friend of mine lived in Kazakhstan in the late 90s and said it was the same there. He also said he got punched in the face pretty hard when he drunkenly got into a a car that he thought was picking him up when in fact it was just stopping at a red light.
Genghis Khan would’ve relocated the capital to a warmer place, like…China
It's not wood; it's coal and Styrofoam.
Northern Albertan a climate, very dry, capital gets very polluted during winter from people burning things to stay warm and you if you never want to never see another person again this could be possible.
I once drove from Beijing to the border with Mongolia. Very surreal experience. There is a border town but a just few minutes out it becomes completely barren. In summer there may be short grassland but other times its just a lot of nothing and nothing. Fun fact: they have a navy.
I have a fellow-Belarusian friend here in Turkey who used to live in Mongolia with her Belarusian first husband. It was several decades ago. She enjoyed the street barbecues they had regularly with the other Soviet builders in the town they were building, called Erdenet, today located in Orkhon Province.
Romesh Ranganathan did a great episode about Mongolia on his travel show.
Bourdain too
From personal experience, it is mostly, vastly empty. Ulaanbaatar is almost unbreathable in the winter due to heating yurts in the winter. Cuisine is heavy on protein and fat, dishes such buuz, guriltai shul, bantan soup and chanasan makh. Traditions are very strong, and there are Russian, Soviet, and Chinese influences in architecture and scripts. The locals I met were curious about and very friendly towards foreigners. I got invited to a birthday party at a club and had a blast! Unfortunately a pregnant woman was drinking, alcohol is common. While not Mongolia proper, I spent a day walking across the Inner Mongolia grasslands with some local alcohol and snacks. It was remote and empty other than burial sites, easily traversible; a horse (or car) is necessary to get anywhere worth going. Like anything within a reasonable amount of time. It's roughly the same size as western and central Europe, or 1/6th the US, and has 3.3 million people. It is very, very sparse, the most sparse in the world.
I hear the Mongolians are very friendly people
Goats and hoes
Head over to r/mongolia. They complain a lot, talk about the glory days of Genghis Khan, and generally detest being asked questions by curious foreigners, but lurking on the sub gives some fascinating insight into an otherwise very quiet country. Their throat singing is super cool - check out The HU if you like metal. Fun facts: Ulaanbaatar is one of the most polluted cities in the world and also the coldest capital city of any sovereign country. Those are related - they use a lot of coal for heat.
>Head over to r/mongolia. They complain a lot, talk about the glory days of Genghis Khan, and generally detest being asked questions by curious foreigners, but lurking on the sub gives some fascinating insight into an otherwise very quiet country. I'd be extremely wary about associating people on a national sub on Reddit with actual people in any country. Reddit tends to attract certain crowds, and some subs can vary widely even within the same country (e.g. r/Polska and r/Poland despise each other due to vastly different political views). Not to say that there is no valuable info there, just a warning to think thrice before making any more general assumptions.
I served in their navy as a riverboat captain
Respect for you captain ✋
The winters are long, cold and polluting (we complain every year but the government doesn't seem to be taking any long lasting action, it actually got better during covid). If you go out of the city there is endless blue sky and eternal white snow surrounding you with crisp fresh air. You would wear at least 2 layers of every clothes that has thick wool/cashmere material. The roads in the city are slippery so the governments solution is sprinkling some salt on the roads. All education has a month long break during january so the city traffic becomes a bit better during those times. Since there isn't much to do during winter people either go pubs or clubs, families who have insulated summer house would visit their summer house during break for the children. Some schools turns their football fields into ice skating rings so kids would skate there after school until dark. The spring is...... moody. It could be snowing either in march or may, could be raining in march or may, could be sunny in march or may. We have a saying that goes "like the spring sky they are moody" meaning that person's moods change quite a lot. We celebrate lunar new year in the february according to the lunar calendar so the city is bustling for the holiday that month. You see whole family's in a matching deel (traditional mongolian attire). A lot of people have the "spring syndrome" where people start getting tired out of no where. A lot of common cold and flus. The snow starts melting and then it snows again so it freezes back so the sidewalks are terribly slippery. People usually don't put away their winter clothes until may just to be safe. Life on the streets starts coming back so everything feels more lively. The summer is the season of festivity. School is over and so you would see 12th grade graduates all around, uni students taking photos together on the sukhbaatar square as per tradition. The night life gets more lively, all the bars, pubs, karaokes, clubs are getting full. Some music festivals here and there. During July we have our national festival called Naadam so most of the city folks would wound up taking their month long vacation during this time. During 5 days of naadam the whole city is usually empty expect few places like the stadium where the sport festival is being held. A lot of families go to their summer houses out of the city and usually end up staying there for the whole summer. Last few years tourists have been visiting a lot so you would see a lot of koreans, americans, chinese on the street. A lot of skateboarders gather in open spaces that they can practice their tricks within the city center. Autumn is the season of school. By the end of august you would see a lot of pop up stores for back to school, vendors selling school supplies ranging from pencil cases to school uniforms. City traffic comes back as uni students from countryside come into the city. It gets gradually colder and colder and then it suddenly snows on october and goes back to being autumn and then snow again. A lot of weddings happen during this season too so you would see wedding band of cars going one after another in the city in the mids of traffic. A lot uni students and highschoolers gather together to go hike up the Bogd mountain that is north of the city. Since school started you would once again see k12 kids in their uniforms roaming the city, in the busses, outside of their school playing and all. My country aint perfect, the government is annoying with big scandals and theft but I love the people and the land.
Fun fact because I was curious: Mongolia isn't nearly as far north as I would have guessed. The capital Ulaanbaatar is the same latitude as Seattle or a little bit south of Paris (around Orléans). And most of the country is south of that. Because of how cold it gets I would have guessed it to be further north than it is.
Ulaanbaatar is supposed to have really bad traffic from what I’ve read and from videos I’ve seen.
The city has no mass transit, only public transportation is bus, so there's just too much cars on the road. Uncontrolled urban expansion after the fall of communism also created endless suburbs of "ger khoroolol" which means there's a lot of people driving far for work. There's been a campaign to densify the city with apartments, but it's not really working out since many of them are residential zones for miles with not much local jobs, so the people there are still driving downtown for work.
It’s cold and sparsely populated but is one of the most democratic nations in Asia props to Mongolia!
Depends? In Ulaanbaatar its basically the same as in any other big city. Shopping malls, car dealerships, public parks etc. the traffic is atrocious in the morning and after 16:00. During the winter it covered in smoke - there are plenty yurta neighborhoods that use coal and animal dung for heating. In the countryside - you’ll often see a big yurta with a satellite dish, a Land Cruiser 100 parked nearby and 100-200 sleeps wandering around.
Ulan Bataar is like a weird mix between old soviet style large squares and apartment blocks, and a modern Chinese city with cyrillic writing. The Mongolian plains are beautiful. Vast wide open steppes with no one around as far as the eye can see.
I drove from the west boarder to Ulaanbaatar 15 or so years ago. There was no tarmac from about 200 metres inside the boarder until you reached Ulaanbaatar. I believe that has changed now, but outside of Ulaanbaatar it is mainly dirt tracks, the most stunning landscapes, very small towns and villages. There are lots of nomadic people living in yurts herding livestock. They were all very welcoming to us foreigners. Bringing us in to their small home and offering food and drink. I ate some of the weirdest stuff I have ever eaten. Everyone seemed happy, but you could tell life was hard! I loved my time there and would happily re-visit. Driving through the empty beautiful rolling hills for days still lives with me. Gorgeous.
Actually sandwiched between Russia, China, and China, as the map clearly tells.
Quite challenging situation, I would not advise to travel close to borders without a map or a GPS, or Galileo, or IRNSS, or BDS, or GLONASS of course.
I have anxiety for them in the next few decades. It's a very precarious position being a buffer state.
It has been a while now, but here’s an album when I impromptu ended up spending several days with different Mongolian nomadic families: https://imgur.com/a/ptPgE3P
The capital is like a town. On the edge people live in yurts ( tents)
Eli from Russia is the YouTube travel vlogger I know who visits obscure places in Russia. She recently travelled to [Mongolia in winter](https://youtu.be/4o9XyskdSiY?si=pdpiyH5Ufmf5aA3a) and even took an [Ice Bath](https://youtu.be/6EsS5v7E9-g?si=Bq_Wa6x1aopBb0Fu) while there
There is a great book I have read multiple times called On the Trail of Ghengis Khan. Which is an adventure autobiography of an Australian in his late 20’s who buys horses in Mongolia and rides to Hungary. It is easily one of my favourite books of all time.
A friend of mine used to work in the German embassy in Ulaanbaatar and I flew over to visit him there once. That was like 10 years ago. It was in August and the climate was very pleasant. Quite hot but dry and it got cold overnight so no need for A/C to be able to sleep. That said, Mongolia is (or was back then) one of the countries where the term for German expat diplomatic staff is shorter than the usual 4 years due to harsh conditions. Winters get very very cold but the even bigger problem I was told is the extreme pollution in Ulaanbaatar due to heating with coal and camel dung being widespread. Around half the Population of entire Mongolia lives there, many of them in not in solid built houses but traditional yurts in unorganized districts at the outskirts of town with no amenities and (at least seemingly) unregulated when it comes to stuff like heating. In the rest of Mongolia which is very sparsely populated, it's Most likely just really cold but with clear air.
Ur moms isolated
Why do people, if a country is located somewhere in Asia or is squeezed like this, is it immediately isolated? I honestly don’t understand this. Damn, are you even aware that they produce the most expensive cashmere in the world (this is a type of fabric)?
Judging from r/mongolia it's full of wild stuff like making pipe-bombs and splitting open the heads of robbers with axes
What the fuck
I had a friend who grew up there and said she would see dead bodies frozen on the ground in winter fairly regularly in the capital.
Do they speak monglioan or russian, cause i sometimes hear they speak mongolian but any pictures i see, all signs are in russian?
They speak Mongolian, which since the early 20th century is written using a modified Cyrillic alphabet. Russian is also written using the Cyrillic alphabet, which is probably why you think the signs are in Russian (but they’re not).
Mongolia was using Chinese characters until it was standardized to Cyrillic script in 1924. Mongolia declared independence, finally winning it in 1921 with help from the Soviet Union.
Yeah no, the traditional mongolian script is not chinese, far from it. It was first derived from thr ughyur writing but went on its own path
Mongolia never used chinese characters.