The roads are completely empty when we drive from Chinggis Kahn Airport to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. ‘Why it is so empty’, I ask our taxidriver. ‘It’s because of Naadam’, she says. Naadam is the world famous Mongolian festival, full of horse racing, arching and fat men wrestling eachother to the ground. And ofcourse full of ceremonies and colourful exotic costumes. ‘Usually there are jams’, she says. Indeed several days later we’ll see the city in full action. So bad even that the smog takes my breath away. I’m told that it is even worse in winter, when the smoke of ger camps merge with the exhaust gasses of the cars. But now the air is clean. We are passing modern buildings, wide boulevards with six lanes, flanked by pine trees. Pine trees in the
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