Mongolia

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A vast, diverse and beautiful countryside about 3 times the size of France and only about 4 million inhabitants. The people are warm and friendly. UlaanBaatar is an up and coming city, business is thriving; it's also a sprawling dirty asian city-many of the locals go around with face masks. We got stuck in the middle of a rally of minibuses outside the local market and emerged gasping for air. Watch where you walk as there are many open manholes-a manifestation of the fact that there are so many homeless in UB, who live in the sewers in the winter when temps are a cruel -40.
UB is the coldest capital in the world.

There are a huge no. of nomadic people and they keep plenty of animals from which they get their warm winter woolies-camel, goat, sheep, yak and horse etc....In fact many of the people live solely off the animals. The staple diet of the nomad is mutton and mare's milk. Interesting watching them milking the mare. The foal is introduced first to stimulate the milk flow, then is whisked away and tied up and the woman replaces it with her bucket. They use this mare's milk in various forms. Airag which is fermented is cheap alcohol (about 5%) and is definitely an acquired taste-it's like bile rising up yoiur throat

These hardy people live out in the middle of nowhere in their tradtional white gers (tents of a wodden frame and covered in felt with an outside layer of cotton layered with animal fat to make it waterproof.) They move twice a year with the weather or rather away from it. In winter they move to warmer parts, sometimes near towns where the kids do go to school. Often the kids may stay with friends or family during the school year if their family live too far away. During summer they move to higher cooler parts. They have beautiful animals-large healthy herds. The horses run free, they have fabulous manes. They are also quite an asset and one horse can get anything from 1 million - 10M togrogs ($1000-10,000.)

So they dont eat their horses! They just keep them for breeding and milking. The size of the herd is seen as a status symbol.

The way of life is changing tho. Outside many a ger now is a a large satellite dish, many have solar panels and some even have their own wind vane!

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