Mongolia is a big vast country of only 3 million people, 1 million of which live in sprawling Ulaan Baatar and our last day was a city tour. UB is the coldest capital city in the world…care to guess who is number 2? Hint – I was born there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulaanbaatar
UB is a weird mix of old and traditional ( the ger district which is quite poor) and new and up ‘n coming. The traffic can suck as some roads are big boulevards 4lanes wide and others are single track. One can see nuclear reactors on the edge of town, while other houses are heated by burning dung. Compared to the nomadic folk we met outside the city, the people in UB are a bit more standoff- ish. The writing is Cyrillic and the language is their own although it sounds like Russian to me…but as I don’t know much Russian…..
Mongolia basically left communism behind in the early 90s but some architecture still has that communist feel.
Final Thoughts
Our sincere thanx to our guide Pujee and driver Unuruu for our last day tour of UB and for an amazing tour of their country. They were both very proud of their nation and awesome ambassadors for their country. The company we went with Eternal Landscapes, promises you the real Mongolian experience. Mongolia is great for kids and our company has kids go for free to help attract families. The kids ran free in open clean air. They chased goats, rode horses and camels and lived an authentic Mongol experience. We did not stay at tourist ger camps but rather with local nomadic families and went off the beaten path when we could.
A highlight was the Gobi Oasis Project where the girls planted a tree to help stop desertification. Another great moment was a private singing concert by the local weatherman ( see previous posts). On our own we went to a very local performance of local dance, singing, instruments and of course throat singing…. Throat singing is absolutely incredible and we have it in our northlands in Canada. Even the dancing was similar to the many pow-wows I went to in the early 90s. I also found the resemblance of the Mongolian people to many Canadian Inuit people to be uncanny – there HAD to have been a Bering land bridge at one time to allow this intercontinental mingling.
The scenery was quite something but it was the people that stole my heart. We will be back some day for their eagle festival in UB where all the eagle hunters gather with their birds to compete….
