Mongolia – The Tuul River

The Tuul River (Туул гол [gol]) [1] flows through central and northern Mongolia. Maybe one of the reasons for Ulaanbaatar (Улаанбаатар) [2] being at its location is the Tuul River for ample water supply and another reason might be the surrounding mountain sheltering the city from harsh winds. The Tuul Gol is sacred to the Mongols, so the river is also called Hatan Tuul (Хатан Туул), which means literally "Queen Tuul". It originates in the Khentii Mountains (Хэнтийн уулс) / Khan Khentii Strictly Protected Area (Хан Хэнтийн дархан цаазат газар) and flows into the Orkhon River (Орхон гол), which itself discharges into the Selenge River (Сэлэнгэ мөрөн), which ends in Lake Baikal (Russian о́зеро Байка́л). It is 883 km long, which equals the Maas River or the Oder River, the better known Rhône River is a bit shorter.

Beyond the Ulaanbaatar suburb of Gachuurt  (Гачуурт), the capital can no longer sprawl outward like an octopus due to the encroaching rocky terrain; consequently, our journey got off to a spectacular start. We drove through Ulaanbaatar early in the morning to a camp on the Tuul River—located past Gachuurt, yet far enough away that the city was no longer even visible. We spotted a rider crossing the wide ford, a feat impossible for our minibus. Next came a ride in an air boat—a flat-bottomed vessel powered by a rear-mounted propeller, much like those used in the Florida Everglades. We headed out into a golden morning.

I remember the 2023 inundations of Ulaanbaatar, but right now the rain hadn't been that bad. 

The Tuul Gol meanders for long stretches through the country and I hope, that the river won't be rectified in the future. I could see the vastness of this river later at the town of Lün (Лүн) [3]. We reached the town across a bridge. Lün has about 2600 inhabitants and has been established in 1924.

One of the pictures I took a little after the start of the airplane taking me back to Germany. Whereas the boat ride had been in the Northeast, this had been to the Southwest of Ulaanbaatar. But it's the Tuul River, flowing constantly with grace and beauty.

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuul_River and 
https://mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1%83%D1%83%D0%BB_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BB 
[2] The city had been known in West as Urga, which comes from Örgöö (Өргөө). It had been established in 1639. Ulaanbaatar means Red Hero and the name had been given to honor Damdin Sükhbaatar (Дамдины Сүхбаатар) [2a], the central square of Ulaanbaatar is named after him and his statue is in front of the government building.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulaanbaatar  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulaanbaatar  
[2a] Damdin Sükhbaatar (1893-1923) was a Mongolian revolutionary, founder of the Mongolian People's Party, and leader of the Mongolian partisan army.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damdin_S%C3%BCkhbaatar 
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCn 

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Mongolia – Some Petroglyphs in the Orkhon Valley

 

The guidebooks are not well geared towards petroglyphs. The Lonely Planet gives a few places and describes a place near the Russian border under the name Tsagaan Sala / Baga Oigar [1], it is the UNESCO World Heritage Monument Baga Oigar / Tsagaan Salaa (Бага ойгор-Цагаан салаагийн). This is really located far from possible travel routes - unless you come from Russia, which is currently not very likely. And the travel guidebook in German doesn't mention any petroglyphs at all [2].

Across the fence of the ger camp

That's why I recommend a spot in the Orkhon Valley (Орхоны хөндий), which is visited on the usual travel routes. The site is easy to find, it is located 150 meters south of a Ger camp. So, now comes my problem, because I haven't recorded the name of the Ger Camp, but I could easily identify it on Google Maps. There is no further information about the camp. I'll give the coordinates here [3]. Anyone who wants will find it; especially since most travelers have rented a furgon with a driver or are traveling in a group. The best way to get there is from Bat-Ölzii (Бат-Өлзий) or from Xujirt (Хужирт), also spelled Khujirt.

I've researched Mongolian sources, but you can only find a few things about them. Petroglyphs on the Russian border and nothing else at all about these petroglyphs in the Orkhon Valley. I then continued searching in German. Finally, I discovered an interesting dissertation from the University of Bonn [4]. This dissertation (Ph.D. thesis) is about archaeological finds in the Orkhon Valley. All the places that have been compiled so excellently, where a lot of details about graves can be found and petroglyphs also have been described, are all about 30 km northeast of the point I was looking for. It would have been too nice, but this dissertation is still an important source for me.

You can find Tamghas (Tamgas), these are clan signs of the last millennium. Incidentally, such signs can also be seen in the Ger Camp restaurant. Some characters could be assigned to the time of the Old Turks or even the Xiongnu (匈奴) - this is the Chinese name for the equestrian nomads who lived between the 3rd century BC and the late 1st century AD [5]. The pickled or punched rock paintings are mostly depictions of animals. The site in the Orkhon Valley does not have as many  animal species as I already knew from visits to Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan [6]. Goats can usually be seen in the Orkhon Valley. Rams, dogs or deer are also possible. These probably come from the late Bronze Age. The timing is problematic; B. Ahrens: “However, this requires sufficient comparison options in both spatial and chronological terms, which are currently only available to a limited extent or not at all for the Orkhon Valley or surrounding areas.” [7] The images available are mostly distorted to make the petroglyphs better visible.

I wouldn't want to bet on the age of these characters.

 Could even be an Altai wapiti (Aлтайский вапити),
also called Maral (Марал)

You can also see recent rock paintings, such as “Om mani padme hum” (ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ).

Faint, but recognizable - ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ

Links and Annotations:
[1] Michael Kohn: Mongolia. Lonely Planet Publications Ltd, 2008. ISBN: 101741045789. P. 222/223.
[2] Michael Walther and Peter Woeste: Mongolia. DuMont travel manual. Dumont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 2019. ISBN: 3770181417. (Kann ja in die nächste Ausgabe hinein.)
[3] 46°54'00.6"N 102°24'44.7"E Ger Camp
[4] Birte Ahrens: Landscape archaeological investigations in the Upper Orkhon Valley, Central Mongolia. - Bonn, 2020. - Dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
Online edition in bonndoc: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:5-58667
[5] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiongnu “The Xiongnu Empire was the earliest and longest-lived steppe empire.”
[6] Petroglyphs at Tamgaly https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2014/10/petroglyphs-at-tamgaly.html and... I thought I had already reported on the petroglyphs of Cholpon-Ata, but I haven't yet.
[7] Ahrens op. cit. p. 126

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Mongolia - The Head of the Muhart River in the Dunes

After we had passed the rock gate, Senjit Khad (Сэнжит хад), we drove on and finally reached  Camp Muhart River (Мухартын гол) [1] via the rock relief and found a place to camp in the dunes. We had lunch there and, interestingly enough, Juri and Svetla, who we had met two days before, somehow found us there. They had driven through the stone gate in the snow.

After we said goodbye to the two of them, we walked or drove down a high dune. It was like a roller coaster ride down the steep track with everyone in the seats holding on with an extra hard grip and screaming loudly. But then you had to park the Furgon and continue on foot.

There is already a little tourism with horses that can be rented. Families during their summer leisure activities use this offer. But we walked to the well area. As we walked along the edge of the dunes, the horses - with their riders, mind you - rushed towards us through the flat riverbed. The dunes around the spring were gorgous and you could see the water emerging from the edge below the massive sand. We then partly returned through the stream bed. I took a different path somewhere to the right because I thought there must be a path on this side of the river too. There was one, but it wasn't particularly trodden in. There were also a few carcasses lying on or next to the path: a cow, a goat, a sheep. At a narrow point I went back through the river to the path on the left side.

We went back to the barrier where a guard had a small house. He told us that he had fined some local tourists who had driven through the barrier. Too bad that it was only about 20€.

On the way to our lone and only camping ground we stopped again at the bed & breakfast place with the small supermarket. At least you could buy something there. I still don't understand how anyone would want to spend the night in the huts when there are also gers.

Links and Annotations [2]:
[1] The text ends, so to speak, with “Mongolia – Rock Gate and Relief between Khar Nuur and Muhart River”
https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/04/mongolia-rock-gate-and-relief-between.html
[2] Just to warrant the plural.

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Mongolia – Rock Gate and Relief between Khar Nuur and Muhart River

 

I had already reported about the trip to Ulaagchiin Khar Lake (Улаагчийн Хар Нуур) [1]. And from there our trip continued just as difficult. However, this has the advantage that you don't meet many travelers there. That day we continued our arduous journey from Khar Lake to the Muhart River (Мухартын гол). In between we were crossing the sand desert, driving past Gers, where the nomads had to protect their animals from wolves, quite steeply uphill, through the rock gate, then again through sand with another another time getting stuck, through a canyon with a rock relief and finally into the sand desert, where the Muhart River originates.

Only small groups travel to this area as it isn't possible to know in advance how the route will be managed. We met a Russian couple who had driven through the rock gate in 10-15 cm of snow just two days before us. When we arrived there wasn't any snow left because the sun had melted it away. Rain can make the sand firmer, but then there is a risk of slipping on the grass slopes.

At first we made very good progress, even over the sandy stretches. Finally we passed a few gers, behind which strange sticks had been sunk into the ground on a boulder edge and some scraps of fabric were hanging from them. It was done to  keep the wolves away by the smell of humans in order to deter the wolves from tearing animals from the herds. From there the grass track went up  very steeply. Then we came to the rock gate or rock arch, which is called Senjit Khad (Сэнжит хад).

The gate is part of a larger rock formation that is altogether called Senjit Khad (Сэнжит хад) and extends over about 15x2km. You have a very good view of the desert. The gate itself measures around 6m wide and 3.5m high. This natural spectacle is not mentioned in my two travel guides [2]. Lonely Planet writes on the Internet [3]: “An impressive rock arch rises from the desert about 95km northeast of Sainshand in Altanshiree sum. If you're on the hunt for all of the Gobi's treasures, find it. Otherwise, you can skip it.” I mean, you could look at it and here are the coordinates [4]

The desert that you can see from above belongs to the Bor Khyar Desert (Бор хярын элс) or also called Bor Khyar Sand Dunes (Бор хярын элсэн манхан). The dunes extend over 200 km and satellite images have shown that this desert is expanding [5].

Then we drove down from this massive mountain again and continued over desert sand. The truck got stuck there again and while we were waiting, we saw that vehicles were constantly getting stuck in this area, as remnants of the (successful) attempts to get out of the sand could be seen. Interestingly, rhubarb, desert rhubarb, also grew there.

After this involuntary but interesting break, we drove through a canyon that offered a beautiful view of the desert. There was a relief and in front an altar-like stone table and an ovoo (Овоо). I transcribed the inscriptions and then had them translated by a program. The upper inscription means [6]: “Out of all the miracles that happen in human life, it is a wonderful thing because of my mother who raised me to be a blessing.” I thought I could get an explanation about the darker inscription, but the translation is something like [7]: “This work is to the memory of the holy spirit of our mother. R. Dugar's children, created by her grandchildren.” In any case, we can assume a Buddhist background, because the woman who lifts the child up to the sun is kneeling on a lotus base. There is also a Tibetan inscription –  ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ – om mani padme hum.

We passed Muhart River Camp (Мухартын голын кэмп), camp being a bit of an exaggeration; at least there is a shop with supplies in the area. We drove on to a place in nature and pitched our tents there. It cooled down again at night and the sun greeted us in the morning, but that's a completely different story.

Links and Annotations:
[1] Mongolia – An Exhausting Trip from Songino to Ulaagchiin Khar Nuur
https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/02/mongolia-exhausting-trip-from-songino.html
[2a] Michael Walther and Peter Woeste: Mongolia. DuMont travel manual. Dumont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 2019. ISBN: 3770181417.
[2b] Michael Kohn: Mongolia. Lonely Planet Publications Ltd, 2008. ISBN: 101741045789.
[3] https://www.lonelyplanet.com/mongolia/the-gobi/dornogov/attractions/senjit-khad/a/poi-sig/1579726/357056
[4] Senjit khad - Сэнжит хад N48.215463409173914 E96.14998245724391
[5] http://www.touristinfocenter.mn/cate1_more.aspx?ItemID=138
[6] Transcribed from the original: “хүмүүний амьлдралд тохиолдох түмэн гаихамшгийн дотроос ерөөл таөин өс гөсөн мимий эхийн ачлад юхтаи ч эүирлэмгүй гайхам”.
[7] Transcribed from the original: “Энээхүү бүтээлийг бидний хаирт ээж / дугарын цэрмаа таны гэгээн / Дурсгалд зриулан / р. Дугар агсаны үр хүүхэд, / ач зээ нараас нь хамтран бүтээв”.
 

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Mongolia – Bayanzak or Flaming Cliffs

I had previously reported that I had visited Bayanzag, but a sandstorm had been raging and made a visit impossible; later I could visit the place [1]. However, I hadn't written about it yet; maybe because my pictures aren't that spectacular.

Let's get to the name. Bayanzag (Баянзаг) means rich in saxaul. Saxaul is a desert plant and I already written about it concerning a trip through Uzbekistan [2]. In the English speaking world, the name Flaming Cliffs is more common, which goes back to the American paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews, who visited the area in the 1920s [3]. The name isn't all that far removed from the alternative Mongolian toponym: Улаан Эрэг (Ulaan Ereg) or red cliffs. Wikipedia gives the coordinates: 44°08′18.66″N 103°43′40.02″E; the place is about 550 km southwest of Ulaanbaatar (Уланбаатар). The cliffs are part of the Gobi Desert. The Chinese name 巴彦扎格 is just a phonetic translation of Баянзаг. There are also local names such as Ширээ шавар and Тэмэн шавар Shiree and Temeen Shavar, where Shiree means table, Temen camel and Shavar clay, mud or probably in this context sandstone [4].

This is where Roy Chapman Andrews and his team discovered the first fossil remains of dinosaur eggs and yes, they don't look much different than in the Jurassic Park films. One of my pictures could show negative impressions of eggs, but I don't want to insist on this interpretation. Other remains of dinosaurs have also been found, Wikipedia names: Archaeornithoides, Velociraptor, Saurornithoides, Oviraptor, Protoceratops, Pinacosaurus - don't try to memorize these names, only paleontologists and 6-12 year old children can do that.

It's worth visiting even just after a sandstorm, but I hope to be there again when the setting sun bathes the cliffs in flaming red.

Links and Annotations:
[1] Mongolia - A Sandstorm and Playing with Bones https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2022/09/mongolia-sandstorm-and-playing-with.html
[2] During Soviet times the seeds of the saxaul shrub were distributed throughout the desert, changing the appearance and making some parts usable as pastures for sheep and goats, also for cattle. Most important saxaul fixes sand dunes, of which I could only see some small ones along the road.
The Kyzyl Kum in Uzbekistan https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-kyzyl-kum-in-uzbekistan.html
[3] Flaming Cliffs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_Cliffs
[4] Баянзаг Улаан эрэг https://www.mass.mn/n/6414

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Mongolia – Snake Lily Valley

 

As the mornings' mist became the light
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair [1]

If you try to google the place Snake Lily Valley now, you're bound to fail because I just invented the toponym, because it sounds awfully captivating. And, to stay true, Snake Lily is definitely not the correct name for the plant or flower in question. The term “Schwertlilie” is more common in German than iris in English, but refers to the same group of plants. Iris is also used in German and here is the relevant quote:

Merci d'être, sans jamais te casser, iris, ma fleur de gravité. [2]

I had already reported on this day of the trip [3]: Between the Achit Nuur (Ачит нуур) and the Üüreg Nuur (Үүрэг нуур) we passed the mining town of the Nuurst Xotgor mine (Нүүрст хотгор) and then drove on to a pass, the landscape was barren with rugged mountains and also round slopes. After visiting the Ovoo (овоо), we first drove further through this landscape and were suddenly surprised when we drove down into a high valley that was covered with irises along its stream [4]. Apparently neither sheep nor goats eat these flowers, otherwise they wouldn't be able to survive. I have pictures, especially of the female fellow travelers, who lay in the flowers to photograph them - but I won't show them. I didn't need to lie down because I'm small and extremely mobile.

If you go from Achit Nuur (Ачит нуур) to Üüreg Nuur (Үүрэг нуур) you will almost certainly drive into this high valley. Go ahead, but you have to drive to make a trip to the northwestern part of Mongolia!

Links and Annotations:
[1] The Dark Night of the Soul by Loreena McKennit – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MclLF473XtA
[2] Translation: “Thank you for being, without ever breaking, iris, my flower of gravity.” More about René Char: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Char I love to read his poems!
[3] https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/02/mongolia-ovoo-on-grave.html
[4] This is not far from Ovoo, Google Maps indicates: 50.00910168940687 N, 90.94004431433501 E.

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Mongolia – Javklhant Tolgoi in Uliastai

 

If you have not been to Mongolia and are not planning to go there, then you will hardly have heard of Uliastai (Улиастай) and Javklhant Tolgoi (Жавхлант толгой). And the two guidebooks [1] that I used don't say much about this town and Javklhant Tolgoi. The reason might be that it is a secondary destination, but it is a very interesting one, as I would like to point out here.

Uliastai (Улиастай) is located 1111 km from Ulaanbaatar (Улаанбаатар) [2]. Uliastai was formerly known as Javklhant (Жавхлант). It is an important city in the west of the country, which was founded during the Qing dynasty (清朝) as a garrison (1733) and from which the advance guard against the Dzungar Khanate set out (1755) [3]. It is still an important city, Wikipedia (English part) puts it in size as the 10th or 16th city of Mongolia; where the text in Mongolian for the 2006 census mentions Uliastai as the 17th largest city [4]. But that's hardly important and I was tempted to mention it only because of its inaccuracy. And moreover, this census was taken almost two decades ago.

Three essential revolutions are worth mentioning in our context:

• the Mongolian Revolution of 1911, which brought independence from China to Outer Mongolia [5]; the new government took over the administration of the Qing, borrowing a little bit from the West, but was essentially a Buddhist theocracy
• only 10 years later, there has already been the Mongolian revolution of 1921, during which a transition from theocratic monarchy to communist rule took place [6]; the Mongolian People's Republic was a satellite state of the Soviet Union and experienced all the horrors of Stalinism (only three temples had survived the iconoclasm of the Stalin era; Stalin himself had to stop the Mongolian communist leader, Khorloogiin Choibalsan (Хорлоогийн Чойбалсан), so that there was still something left left to show international visitors, and let's not forget that over 10,000 monks were also killed, whereof the word killing doesn't do justice to the brutality in the slightest)
• the Mongolian revolution of 1990 took a long time coming, but it was “a peaceful democratic revolution which led to the country's transition to a multi-party system” [7].

Under communist rule there were significant distortions in religious practice. Thousands of monks were killed and most of the monastery complexes and temples were destroyed. This is important for the following consideration, because Uliastai and Javklhant Tolgoi show the modern reconstruction, because the complex that I will describe later is at most 25 years old, most of the works here are probably much younger. A national piety is developing again in Buddhism. And with this keyword we should look first at what kind of Buddhism can be found in Mongolia.

Buddhism in Mongolia is a form of Lamaism. The term lama is probably familiar, it means teacher. The lamaistic form of Buddhism is a special form of Mahayana Buddhism, into which elements of Tantrism were also integrated. In addition, one should not forget that before Buddhism, Bön, a shamanistic teaching, was predominant in Tibet and from these pratices a lot of rituals and other content certainly migrated into this Buddhism. In addition to popular piety with elements such as circumambulating holy places or using prayer wheels, Lamaism also managed to promote esoteric practices. In Mongolia, elements of Tengrism, the previously dominant shamanism, were  incorporated. Blue is the color of Tengrism, because the sky (Tenger / Тэнгэр) is blue. In the Himalayas, a white scarf is often placed around Buddha figures and laso around the neck of people. This is also done in Mongolia. However, the scarf is blue and is called Khadag (хадаг) [8]. The importance of Tibetan Buddhism for Mongolia is also reflected in the Dalai Lama's nine visits to Mongolia. Perhaps I should mention an important name out of the history of Lamaism in Mongolia: Öndör Gegeen Zanabazar (Өндөр Гэгээн Занабазар) [9]; see below. And even after Stalinism, Buddhism had a difficult time, so that most of the places where people could express themselves religiously in public were not available.

Javklhant Tolgoi (Жавхлант толгой) is new and construction is continuing diligently. The sanctuary is a large T-shaped area on a hill including the top of the hill. Walls border the site and you walk up the steps along the these walls. In the lower part there is a large ger. At the top there are stupas of different sizes; I read the numbers 9 and 11 (not nine eleven) [1], but the picture from the back of the hill already shows more and there are even more! In some you can look at statues behind glass. If I interpret it correctly, there will be a pavilion above the sacralarea, from which you can see the old garrison and Uliastai. There are also concrete statues of elk, ibex and argali sheep to admire. Back downstairs, prayer wheels of different age can be seen.

Even if you are not interested in modern stupas and old-style figures, it is worth climbing the hill to at least admire the view.

Links and Annotations:
[1a] Michael Walther and Peter Woeste: Mongolia. DuMont travel manual. Dumont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 2019. ISBN: 3770181417.
[1b] Michael Kohn: Mongolia. Lonely Planet Publications Ltd, 2008. ISBN: 101741045789.
[2] I know Wikipedia says 1115 km, but hand on heart 1111 km just sounds better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uliastai
[3] And because I love unnecessary digressions so much: Marie Antoinette was born this year. In 1793 she was executed by guillotine - but that's only the beginning of bloodshed in this blogpost, I fear.
[4] https://mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B9
[5] Mongolian Revolution of 1911 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_Revolution_of_1911
[6] Mongolian Revolution of 1921 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_Revolution_of_1921
[7] Mongolian Revolution of 1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_Revolution_of_1990
[8] Khadag (хадаг) is the Mogolian word for the ritual scarf, formerly made of silk, now mostly made of polyester because of better durability. The Tibetan scarf is white to show the purity of the giver's heart, whereas the Mongolian is blue as the sky. The origins lie both in lamaism as well as tengerism (better word for shamanism). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khata
[9] Öndör Gegeen Zanabazar (Өндөр Гэгээн Занабазар) lived from 1635 to 1723 and was the religious leader of Lamaism, more specifically of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) lineage of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia [9a], and he also has been the secular leader. Zanabazar is known for his bronze sculptures or the development of the Soyombo script [9b]; overall he was a prodigious sculptor, painter, architect, poet, costume designer, scholar and linguist.
[9a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanabazar
[9b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyombo_script You can see the script on the Mongolian flag.

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Mongolia – Villages with No Name and other Settlements

While traveling through Mongolia in 2023, I made a surprising discovery and saw a village that was just in the process of formation. There were the first houses that were somehow strung together. It had something to do with supply and also with domestic tourism. I then looked very closely at towns and settlements in general. I don't just want to report about these villages but also about structures.

Let's start with some observations. When you travel through the landscape, you are particularly struck by the nomads' gers, which do not stand together in clusters, but are at some distance from each other, so that you just may imagine that these gers have something to do with each other. Maybe just that the people could help each other. Then there are also gers near the cities. I first noticed this when we flew from Ulaanbaatar (Улаанбаатар) to Khovd (Ховд) and on the approach to Khovd I saw gers that were quite close to Khovd. These were the gers of people who were looking to make a fortune in the city but had not yet found a place in the city itself.

Let's move on to the villages. There are structured villages, there are gers, wooden houses, stone concrete. And one feature has always fascinated me: the wooden construction fences that you can see even in the small towns. Areas are demarcated by these fences. These small towns provide the first supply structures, such as shops or a small supermarket and a gas station. In a zum (Cум)  center you will find more shops, schools, kindergartens, hospitals and administrative centers. There are already rental apartments in these small towns. In places where raw materials such as ore or coal are mined, towns are also being built and I have already reported on this. In 2022 I saw a very small settlement near a mine using a zoom lens [1]. In 2023 I was able to visit an already larger settlement at another coal mine, the Nuurst Xotgor mine (Нүүрст хотгор) [2].

Now let's talk a little about these Wild West villages, that's what I call them. I have also seen such villages in ad hoc ger agglomerations. Being able to move on was definitely planned, because the reasons for these agglomerations were festivals or seasonal tourism, the offers included airag (Айраг), meat, riding horses or camels. And then there were also those without gers or in which wood or wooden houses were the predominant feature. These are intended as permanent villages and, like here in Germany, they are the so-called ribbon-built villages (the German term Straßendorf – street village – looks more at the way in which these villages develop, along the road). You have a front of all the houses facing the road or in our case the piste, and you could usually see large areas where you could park in front of the houses. This means that things were sold there or services were provided.

My hypothesis is that parts of the Mongolian population who can no longer lead their lives in traditional structures will not allow themselves to be driven into the cities, but will instead try to build something new close to their homeland. Transhuming between summer and winter pastures might cover more than 100 kms.

What are the administrative structures in Mongolia? The two travel guides [3] that I used provide little information about it, a little more can be found in the German book. On page 31 it is reported that Mongolia is divided into 21 aimags, further into zums and bags. But that's not entirely complete, so I'll explain it in more detail here [4]:
First level: Capital / Niislel (Нийслэл) and 21 aimags (Аймаг) or provinces, originally the term means tribe, tribal group.
Second level: Düüreg (дүүрэг) or district for the capital, of which there are nine, and sum or zum (Cум) districts (original meaning arrow), of which there are 331.
Third level: Committee or Khoroo (Xороо) in the capital, of which there are 152, and team, rrigade or bag (Баг) of which there are 1568. But these are not important for my investigation or for the traveler.
The aimags and zums are more important because they usually have the name of the main town and the necessary infrastructure can be found there, better in the aimags than in the zums. In the zums the supermarket also has a wide range of products, but in the larger cities the range is no worse than in Europe. For example, if you camp at Üüreg Nuur, then you are 140 km away from the aimag center.

Of course, the government has plans and there are legal regulations for their implementation. These programs can even be viewed in English [5].

The road network seems to me to be an important factor. There is already a network of paved roads, which increase the closer you get to Ulaanbaatar. And this applies to other centers, too, there are more tarred roads near the centers. The government is expanding the road system, but the fact is that many towns can only be reached via piste / dirt road. These slopes tend to be wide, sometimes having nine or more tracks. They become impassable when, for example, it has rained and someone then lays a new track because otherwise they would get stuck in the mud. This goes so far that I saw, for example, at Achit Nuur, how the herders in the swampy area try to protect the pastures of their animals by digging ditches so that not everyone creates a new track and of course excess water is drained. However, due to the inadequate road network, there are opportunities for low-threshold supply structures in the countryside.

Rural exodus is another problem and it has its origins in overgrazing. There are very unproductive areas that are prone to desertification or these feed the herds for a while, but then suddenly that area of land is lost. There are rich pastures, for example in the Orkhon Valley (Орхоны хөндий), but if you traditionally don't have pastures there, you can't just graze in gthe region. In the Orkhon Valley there are 4 inhabitants per square kilometer and that is already a very populated area for Mongolia.
Another factor for rural exodus is the zud or dzud (Зуд) [6]. This is a problem that affects all Central Asian countries. It describes a condition in which the cattle can no longer find food in winter because the snow is too high or because the snow has thawed and become liquid and the pastures are then frozen over again; you can read it very nicely in the Wikipedia article and the different forms of zud are also presented there. The herders lost their livestock particularly devastating in the winter of 2009/2010. Some families, 9,000 families in fact, had lost all their livestock. 33,000 families had lost half of their livestock. At that time, 80 percent of the country was covered by 20 to 60 centimeters of snow. At night the temperature fell to minus 48 degrees Celsius in the Uvs aimag (Увс аймаг); which I also visited.
Another factor for rural exodus is certainly desertification, which has increased significantly in recent decades and will increase on average as rainfall continues to decline [7]. This drives people away from the countryside and when they arrive in the cities there is no work. Unemployment in the suburbs of Ulaanbaatar is up to 60%.

In the northwest of Mongolia - at first I didn't really realize what an interesting feature I was seeing - we passed a village that consisted of only a few houses, and only on one side of the road. Like in the Wild West, houses were built very close to each other. There was space for cars or horses in the front. And it was probably about offering some kind of service there, such as selling something, because this was in the area where there was also something happening with tourism. These areas are not yet widespread, at least not outside of the well-known areas traveled by tour companies. That's why I suspect that domestic tourism probably plays a role here, which make people to come up with the idea of setting up a kiosk or small store there. Perhaps the beginning of such villages is a research station or the hut of a gamekeeper, who builds a house next to it and opposite you can see a toilet hut; I just have one house and gamekeeper in mind. And then other might join. I'll now try to explain this with my own experiences. I imagine it's similar to an empty parking lot in front of the supermarket, at least here in Germany, if I park somewhere away from the other cars, it doesn't take long until there are more cars next to it, even though there would be enough space otherwise. So one doesn't look for an extra space where no one else is standing, but one looks for the proximity of another car. I imagine the same thing would happen at the creation of such villages. You look for the proximity of another house. So it's not the type of settlement in which everyone has a piece of land and puts their farm on it, but it's this system of ribbon-built villages. This Wild West system, in which houses are placed next to each other, attracts the attention of long-distance drivers who pass there more often. I imagine it would be very difficult to drive trucks on these long stretches of road. Breaks are necessary and such a rest area may well be the core of village development.

I'm looking forward to further developments. How will the different levels of government react? Are legal requirements to be created? Or will Mongolia retain its charm of vastness and outpost for a while longer.

Links and Annotations:
[1] Mongolia - Coal Mining https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2022/09/mongolia-coal-mining.html
[2] Mongolia – Coal Mining at Nuurst Xotgor in between Achit Nuur and Üüreg Nuur https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/01/mongolia-coal-mining-at-nuurst-xotgor.html
[3a] Michael Walther and Peter Woeste: Mongolia. DuMont travel manual. Dumont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 2019. ISBN: 3770181417.
[3b] Michael Kohn: Mongolia. Lonely Planet Publications Ltd, 2008. ISBN: 101741045789.
[4] Mongolia is an island, нийслэл https://mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BB_%D1%83%D0%BB%D1%81%D1%8B%D0%BD_%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%B3,_%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BB%D1%8D%D0%BB
[5] https://www.urbanagendaplatform.org/sites/default/files/2023-04/MNG_NUA%20implementation%20report%202016-2022_Eng.pdf
[6] Zud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zud
[7] This does not exclude heavy rainfall with flooding. The water destroys and flows away without being used, so that the soil dries out again later. This happens very quickly in the dry air and solidifies the soil, which becomes increasingly difficult to absorb water.

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