Land of the Nomad

Since catching the photography bug, life has taken me to some pretty interesting places (Morocco, Istanbul, Myanmar) but this one may take the cake.  Mongolia, tucked between China and Russia, has a population of 3 million people which makes it the one of the most sparsely populated, fully sovereign countries in the world.  The capital of Ulaanbatar has about 45% of the population of the whole country!

This is the land of the nomad living with harsh conditions in the winter and trying to make up for it in the summer.  Many live in gers which you might better know has  yurts.  These structures are easy to move as the sparse grass is grazed by their herds of horses, sheep, yak and goats.  I'm sure I'll have some great pictures later on to show exactly what I'm referring to.

The country is mainly Buddhist, which has come back into favor after the fall of communism in 1991.  Thousands of monks were killed and temples destroyed during the communist rule.  Russia had a great deal of influence over the government at the time and we all know how the communists felt about religion.

Mining is the number one industry in the country, with deposits of copper, coal, tungsten, tin and gold making up a majority of the mining activities.  Herding (thus the nomads) is number two and the activity we will most likely come in contact with during the trip.

Enough about things you can find on Wikipedia.  Your real questions is probably why would we find ourselves heading to Mongolia.  We have a joke around our house that we're leaving our vacation planning to our photography friends, Liza and Ira.  These should be familiar names from previous blogs.  They do a great job of finding interesting spots with the type of planning an accountant feels comfortable with.

The other question I've been asked is how will we get there and how long does it take. We'll leave early Friday morning for a flight out of Dallas to Seoul.  From there we take Mongolian Air into Ulaanbatar.  Pretty simple routing (I've seen worse trying to get to locales in the US).  What's not so great is the 24 or so hours it will take to get there.  I see lots of movies and naps in my future.

So, I invite you to tag along with us as we explore Mongolia.

Next: Ulannbatar