Children’s Day
My 2nd full day in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, was June 1st, 2024. It also happened to be Children's Day, a national holiday where children (and Mother's) are celebrated. In Ulaanbaatar there is a large festival with streets closed off for markets, children's amusements and rides, and various demonstrations and displays. There is also a wonderful parade the ends up in the central main square called Sükhbaatar Square. The main features of the parade are the marching young people wearing traditional outfits. At the square hundreds of school students were set up, school by school, to play the Morin Khuur, a traditional stringed musical instrument considered a symbol of the Mongolian nation.
I spent most of the day exercising my street photography skills, watching the parade and wandering around the square and side streets. This video is a summary.
Ulaanbaatar Architecture
I love to photograph cityscapes. During my brief visit to Ulaanbaatar, I spent some of my time doing just that and this photo essay depicts what I saw. I took the photos while I walked around the central part of the city or out of car windows. You can dive right in and view the video “Ulaanbaatar- The City” which is about 5 minutes in length, or you can first read my brief note that places Ulaanbaatar’s architecture and cityscape into historical context. My research for it was limited to a few travel books and Google.
Ulaanbaatar was founded in 1639 as a nomadic Buddhist centre, changing location 28 times, and was permanently settled at its modern location in 1778. Today it has about 1.7 million residents. Like the country, Ulaanbaatar’s modern history is complex. During most of the 20th century it was dominated by Soviet trained urban designers and architects. The name of the city became Niislel Khureheh (“Capital of Mongolia”) in 1911 when Outer Mongolia declared itself autonomous from China. In 1921 the city was occupied by troops of Mongolia’s revolutionary leader, Damdiny Sühbaatar, and the Soviet Red Army, and together they brought an end to Chinese domination over Mongolia. In 1924 Mongolia was declared a people’s republic and the city was renamed Ulaanbaatar, which means “Red Hero.” The country remained a communist, one-party state closely aligned with the Soviet Union until 1992 when it transformed into a democratic, market economy nation with free multiple-party elections.
The central area of Ulaanbaatar, where most tourists visit, is under rapid transformation and as a result, consists of a mashup of sorts. One finds numerous dull, Soviet era, four and five story apartment buildings and shopping centres and grand government and public buildings, the latter often brightly painted and have ornamental columns. One also encounters a growing sea of modern, colourful, cement and brick condo or rental apartment blocks 8-10 stories high, and a few newer, taller, glass and steel towers up to 35 stories in height that are usually hotels or hotel-retail-office complexes. The city also has some unfinished, skeletal-like cement buildings in various states of completion, some abandoned after the 2008 economic crash and some apparently in hiatus waiting for additional financing. At the center of Ulaanbaatar is an expansive square called Sukhbaatar Square, named after the 1921 revolutionary leader. Here one finds the seat of government, Government Palace, and grand statues and monuments honouring Damdiny Sühbaatar and Chinggis Khan and other 13th century Mongol Empire rulers. The National University of Mongolia is nearby. On the north and west outskirts of the city lies the sprawling Ger District, an informal settlement made up of traditional Mongolian dwellings called gers. The Ger District is home to about 840,000 people, which is about 50% of Ulaanbaatar's population.
Interestingly, Ulaanbaatar has a centralized heat and power system. Both are generated at three coal-fired power plants in the west side of the city. The heat is then distributed via a network of large hot water pipes to the city’s buildings. I managed to get one photo of this distribution network as we drove into the city from the airport. Given that Ulaanbaatar is the coldest national capital in the world, the supply of heat is critical. Unfortunately, in winter Ulaanbaatar has some of the world’s worst air pollution because of emissions from the coal-fired plants.
Ulaanbaatar Street Photography
Mongolia has a population of about 3.4 million people, 1.7 million of whom reside in the capital Ulaanbaatar. The city is found on the Tuul River in the north central part of the country and lies about 1350m above sea level. Its population is young: 32% of Mongolia's population is 14 or younger, with about 4% aged 65 and older. Canada in comparison has an older population, with 16% aged 14 and younger, and 19% aged 65 and older.
I had the opportunity to walk around Ulaanbaatar for a couple of days in early June. At times the city streets felt somewhat familiar even though it was my first visit. I think in part this was because of its high level of hustle, bustle and energy which reminded me of many other developing cities. A sense of national pride and optimism for the future prevailed and I found the youthfulness of the place infectious. Unfortunately, Ulaanbaatar also shares the less desirable features of all developing cities: congested and chaotic roads, insane traffic jams, air pollution and a strained infrastructure. Still, I loved it all.
This series of images focuses on the life I found on its streets. The final group of images was taken from my hotel room window as the sun set on my last evening in Mongolia.
South Towards the Bayan Gobi
As the crow flies south the distance between Ulaanbaatar and the Chinese border is 875 km. Most of this area is covered by the Gobi Desert (note- this is a bit of a redundancy since Gobi means desert in Mongolian). Our southernmost target for the nine-day photography expedition was to get to Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park and the Khongoryn sand dunes, about 100km from the border or a four-day drive away. We left Ulaanbaatar the morning of June 2nd heading southwest towards the Gobi in a seven-vehicle convoy of luxury 4x4’s and a Russian UAZ van. By the time we returned to Ulaanbaatar nine days later we would drive a total of 1870km at an average speed of 45km per hour and spend 32 hours moving in vehicles across the Mongolian landscape.
Southern Mongolia is vast. I have no other word to describe it. Most of it feels barren and formidable, a seemingly endless, flat, dusty, shattered steppe decorated with small bushes, carpeted by tufts of grass and distressed flowering plants, dissected by dried riverbeds and slashed by rocky, low mountain ranges. There are no fences. Rarely one finds a spring-fed stream or pond surrounded by lush grass. Trees, usually Siberian Elms, eke out a living against all odds and are the rarest of finds. Outside of the scarce small towns and villages that dot the landscape, people are very far and few between; most are nomadic or semi-nomadic and tend goat herds, caravans or flocks of camels and locally, where there is sufficient surface water, horses. We even intersected a cattle-drive a couple of hours out of the city.
After a day of driving on reasonable tarmac the last 10km or so to our first ger camp is a quick introduction on how we will travel for the succeeding eight days- offroad on rough, unmarked dirt tracks. The first ger camp is named after the area - Bayan Gobi- or the “Rich” Gobi and marks the northern most edge of the Gobi Desert.
Gobi Gurvan Saikhan National Park
Lying some 630 km SSW of Ulaanbaatar one finds the Zuun Saikhan Mountains, a series of east-west trending, highly eroded, steep-sided low ranges that cut across the Gobi landscape. This is the location of Gobi Gurvan Saikhan National Park and the famous Yoliin Am, or the “Gorge of Bearded Vultures”. We came to the park to hike a couple of kilometres along the gorge looking to photograph the rocky landscape and the high-flying vultures as well as any other interesting flora or fauna we came across. On this particularly sunny day, I saw vultures, Siberian ibex (Capra sibrica) and yellow poppies (Papaver nudicaule) commonly referred to as the Iceland Poppy (although they don’t grow in Iceland!). At the trail head the gorge narrows to a few metres across and is floored by thick ice. The ice has that unique glacial turquoise colour and is present almost year-round. As recently as 18,000-10,000 years ago, during the closing stage of the last global glacial period known as the Pleistocene, these same mountain ranges were covered by permanent glaciers that fed ice tongues into the lower lying valleys.
For me the best surprise of all was that we unexpectedly came to the park the same day as the annual Gobi Yak Festival which had set up closer to the park entrance. I was freaking out excited to have the chance to photograph this truly authentic Mongolian event, but the schedule was tight. After much pleading we were given 20 minutes to capture what we could. Twenty minutes! I did the best I could. The Gobi Saikhan Yak Festival has many things in common with country festivals worldwide. There’s entertainment and food, lots of food, the chance to meet up with old and new friends and get the most recent news and gossip, there are horses, lots of horses, and perhaps uniquely, there are Yaks!