We had already been at Achit Nuur (Ачит нуур) [1] and now on our way to Üüreg Nuur (Үүрэг нуур) [2]. The Achit Nuur is a freshwater lake, rich in fish and south of the lake there is a nature reserve, where you can find ring-necked pheasants, wild boars and beavers. However, we had not visited this nature reserve. In the province of Uvs (Увс аймаг) there are numerous lakes and the Üüreg Nuur is one of them. It is a small lake and these lakes are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site along with the Uvs Nuur Basin (Увс нуурын хотгор). It is a diverse landscape with desert steppes, forests, lakes and huge mountains. Uuvs Province is one of the coldest, warmest and driest regions in Mongolia.
I was particularly impressed by the vastness of the landscape. If you meet people there in this empty landscape, they are most likely to be Kazakhs, as they make up around 90% of the population of Uuvs province. The Kazakhs are an Islamic Turkic people. In the distance to the west you can see the mountains of nearby Russia.
On our route to Üüreg Nuur we kept seeing pieces of coal at the road side. Now it wouldn't be worth collecting this coal, but it could be useful in an emergency situation. As you can see from the pictures, it is not unlikely that some of the load would loosen from the trucks and fall down.
We only drove briefly past the Nuurst Xotgor mine (Нүүрст хотгор) [3]; It wasn't an actual destination of our trip, but it was interesting to see. Coal is mined in opencast mines. This mine is located about 80 kilometers west of the provincial capital Ulaangom (Улаангом) and just 25 kilometers south of the Üüreg Nuur. The mine holds a huge reserve of coal, estimated to be around 109 million tons. This makes it one of the largest coal reserves in Asia and the world. It is assumed that coal can be mined here for at least 40 years.
And what is done to nature looks just as ugly as it does in the Rhineland [4], where I live. Huge areas have also been uncovered here, albeit by shapeless excavators, and lie there in the open. That's why there are many demonstrations here, some of which escalate, especially when it comes to protecting forests. Well, there won't be any demonstrations around the Nuurst Xotgor, which is exploited mainly by a Korean company. To do this there also is a mining town. And it's rather ugly. Actually worse than ugly, maybe because it seems so neglected. There isn't even a name on Google Maps, but my guess is they call it Nuurst Xotgor. The only bright spot from my side was the mosque. And that's the difference between the Kazakhs and the Mongols, the Kazakhs are mainly Muslims. And the majority of Mongolians are Buddhists.
Later we came across a very funny traffic sign. I have often seen road signs like this in lonely areas around the world that point to something along the slopes.
Links and Annotations:
[1] https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-boss-of-achit-nuur.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achit_Lake
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9C%C3%BCreg_Lake and
https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2023/07/a-ceremony-at-lakefront-of-uureg-nuur.html
[3] Нүүрст хотгор is diffent to нуурын хотгор. While the cyrillic letter “у” is “u”, “ү” is only used in Mongolian and comes close the the German umlaut “ü”. Wikipedia gives the coordinates 49°51′12″N 90°53′23″E, so you can check on Google maps mine an mining town. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuurst_Khotgor_coal_mine
[4] Google maps gives 50.91220576159857 N, 6.528015829699876E for the Rhineland.
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