While central Ulaanbaatar enjoys the prosperity brought forth by government workers, tourism, and the fat largesse of mining cash, it doesn’t take too long to discover that, like so many cities, the have-nots far outnumber the haves.
Most visitors stick to the town’s core around Peace Avenue with its department stores, cafes, museums, and cultural attractions, never really getting a taste of the hardscrabble existence that is the reality for most of its residents. This tough day-to-day struggle is most evident in the ger district—the ever expanding zone of small houses and yurts found on the slopes outside of the city center.
It was our last day in town before heading out while David recovered from his equine mishap, and Will and Scott agreed to join me on an urban hike. I decided to head up to the hills surrounding the city to taste the real Ulaanbaatar, or at least a flavor of it. While not a proponent of “poverty tourism,” I do like to get an honest look at any place I visit, and will certainly wander into the rougher parts of town as long as it's not stupidly dangerous to do so.
Mongolia, like most of East Asia, is a remarkably safe place to wander most any hour of the day, though there are stories of drunk young men at times getting aggressive with foreigners, especially if they perceive you to be Russian. Animosities towards the Russkies linger from the Soviet era, though over the decades—since the country’s transformation to democracy and market economy—this antipathy has somewhat subsided.
We set off down the perpetual parking lot of Peace Avenue, taking a hard right onto a smaller street after about fifteen minutes of hoofing it along the humming sidewalk. The traffic eased up as we made our way past a few low-rent hotels, dark bars, and sketchy-looking karaoke joints.
Soon, the concrete began to show signs of neglect, with plenty of potholes and missing chunks, and the alleyways turned into rough, unpaved tracks. While Will snapped a few photos with his massive zoom lens, it occurred to me that much of UB was still unpaved, lending credence to stories that just twenty years back it was mainly a town of dirt roads.
We soon found ourselves on one of these crude paths, which snaked through the rickety residential area buffering the downtown. The bigger buildings gave way to small houses that could best be described as glorified shacks, each penned in by tall, often makeshift wooden fences.
Each family had their own little plot in a way that was nearly suburban; the fences offered privacy and surely protection from the winds that relentlessly lashed these haphazard structures during the harsh winter months. Still, it was strange to see these people—nomads by nature—cooped up like animals themselves.
This would later become clear outside of the city, where there were nearly no fences at all. Mongolians and their livestock enjoyed a free-range country where private property was the exception rather than the rule, but the city called for a different way of life, and the people in these little homes were making due and adapting to the regimented needs of urban existence.
As the path climbed up the slope, we began to get a better view of the city splayed out beneath us. Dogs barked from behind the fences, while others—covered in thick matted fur—lurked at the entranceways of the homes, sometimes stepping out onto the dirt road in a bold manner.
These canines were, without exception, hulking beasts; they grew them big in Mongolia and you surely wouldn’t want one of these local mutts coming at you. Scott was keenly aware of this and picked up a big rock at first sight of one of these hounds, repeatedly warning us of the danger they presented.
Still, despite some bellowing barks and growls that rattled fences, we were left unmolested by the ger district’s dogs. As we continued our climb, a few residents passed us on their way up or down, sometimes greeting us with quizzical looks, or more often, shy, warm smiles.
They surely didn’t see too many big white dudes decked out in hiking gear trudging up their rough tracks, but Mongolians have a laid-back way about them and rarely seem to express surprise, even if they’re feeling it inside. I got the sense that, in their culture and climate, it paid off to appear as if you’ve seen everything before.
While we were certainly witnessing poverty, it wasn’t the severe, crushing variety you’re likely to come across in parts of Cambodia, The Philippines, India, or say, South Sudan. These homes were humble but sufficient, and likely warm enough in the winter.
There were also a number of stations throughout the neighborhood distributing fresh water through hoses and pumps, as if it were gasoline. The local kids were tasked by their families to keep the water supply going: They strapped the plastic jugs to little carts which they pulled over the broken, uneven road back and forth to these concrete water stations, all manned by bored-looking old men sitting in booths overlooking their mini-domains.
These were people living in very raw, barebones conditions, though I wouldn’t describe it as squalor. They seemed to take a basic pride in the neighborhood which meant, while certainly rough, things were relatively orderly.
That said, the ground was often littered with trash and other detritus: empty vodka bottles, snack wrappers, cast-off clothing, cigarette butts, and scraps of metal and plastic—not to mention massive piles of dog shit Pieces of tarp—which fluttered in the intermittent wind—were nailed to sections of fencing in order to cover up holes, and many of the properties had a thrown-together, improvised feel.
This was more pronounced as we crested the hill: there were just as many gers as actual huts. Sometimes they were set up in the dirt yards next to the more permanent dwellings, surely to accommodate relatives arriving from the countryside and their children, who ran about in little packs with dirty faces and dark, curious eyes.
Mongolia, like much of the so-called developing world, is filled with children. Families are large and thriving and it reminds of how things used to be most everywhere, at least until recently.
Much of the West—along with East Asia—has been shockingly depopulated of kids. Sure, you’ll see one or two with their parents and larger groups at school or other educational institutions, but to take in squads of squealing, semi-feral children just running about unattended is largely a thing of the past, and whenever I witness it in a place such as Mongolia, The Philippines, or Mexico, I can’t help but feel as if the rest of us have lost something precious.
At the top of the rise, situated next to a small gray building, was an, ovoo, the cairns made of stacked rocks found at the summit of most every Mongolian mountain. These stone piles are said to symbolize various deities and ancestral spirits, and act as shrines and centers of shamanism, which is still widely practiced throughout the country.
Like most any, this ovoo contained a long piece of wood shoved into the top of the rocky heap, which was enveloped with wide strips of blue silk. Known as a khadam, this banner represents the blueness of the open sky and Tenger, the god who personifies it.
As I took it all in, a cluster of clouds swirled and closed in behind it, obscuring the heavens in an attempt to muster an afternoon squall. As the wind kicked up, the khadam began to flap noisily, nearly overtaking the chorus of barking dogs and incessant grumble and hiss of the city around us.
For a moment I was reminded where we were: in an ancient land of sweeping, rolling hills, proud nomads, and a horseborn empire once so mighty it flooded over not only most of Asia, but a good portion of Europe as well.
Ulaanbaatar—this former Soviet outpost of wide boulevards, neglected statues, tatty kiosks, and squares so empty they swallowed you up— was just a temporary, futile imposition over a collection of gers and an ancient monastery along one of Mongolia’s many pristine rivers. For an instant, the whole city melted away, until the whine and clank of an approaching car’s overworked gearbox boomeranged me back to the present.
The sky opened up, and after deploying our rain jackets and descending the little mountain, we found ourselves at the base of another. This required crossing another busy road (one of the main routes out of town) filled with a relentless stream of trundling lorries and honking cars. After playing Frogger across the chaos of the little highway, the rain began to slacken, and I realized that we were standing next to a vast cemetery at the base of the hill.
The headstones were thin and crumbling, and the forlorn field they called home was overgrown and rubbish-strewn, with uneven tufts of grass interspersed with bits of random garbage. Some of the markers were engraved with Chinese characters, while others used Cyrilic, including the resting places of several soldiers, one of which featured the carved image of the military man’s bust, recently highlighted in garish gold and green spray paint.
Putrefying at the edge of this neglected boneyard were also two severed cow’s heads. The smell hit me first, and once I tracked down the source, we speculated as to why they sat there rotting, though we suspected that shamanism was at play.
After all, that’s usually the answer in (at least) East Asia when you come across random animal parts. Still, this sad, deserted place of the dead may have also served as a dumping ground. Despite the fact that countless corpses had already been buried there, it looked like the ideal place to dispose of a body, in a pinch.
The ger neighborhood at the crown of the second hill was served by a catastrophic dirt track connecting to the highway at the bottom. The afternoon shower had turned the soil to muck, and the few cars attempting the climb were struggling mightily, slipping and sliding in the slimy face of the rise, bringing home the notion of just how undeveloped these fringe districts were.
As the three of us made our admittedly slow hike to the top, we quickly outpaced the vehicles grinding their way along, and while it occurred to me to perhaps help push, I also got the sense that these drivers were accustomed to piloting their vehicles in adverse conditions. This was soon confirmed by the fact that, despite the difficulty, each car eventually crested the hill and made its way deeper into the outer limits of UB.
The summit of this hill offered a terrific vista over the lower ger district we had just traversed, along with the gimmering high-rises of modern UB down below. In many cities—such as LA—the heights are often considered prime real estate, home to mansions and other swank residences. However, in UB and some other towns, the hillsides are the slums: steep, out-of-the-way, insecure, and hard-to-service.
This was clearly the wrong side of the tracks, yet the view was a gut-punch. Sure, it was inspiring to take in the breadth of the city, but the summits of the surrounding ridges also reminded us of just how grand Mongolia really was: Bogd Khan (a sacred mountain) stared us down from the opposite side, suggesting a wild country with a history much deeper than the settlements spread out beneath us.
We could also clearly make out the belching coal plants that powered this whole endeavor down the valley, and given the number of vehicles—plus the fact that UB was hemmed in by ridges—I didn’t envy the residents once winter set in. Not only would it be crushingly cold, but the air would turn to poison. It’s for this reason that—despite the fact that much of Mongolia is unbelievably pristine—Ulaanbaatar is often ranked as the most polluted city in the world.
Given the altitude, these working-class residents would be spared the worst of it, and as the shouts and sounds of a nearby kids’ basketball game reverberated among the muddy streets, I was filled with a twinge of hope, though I couldn’t but think help if they’d all be happier back out on the simpler world of the steppe, away from all of this toxic, concentrated, citified nonsense.
Of course I considered this while taking photos from my smartphone, soaking up an international journey that few in the world could hope to ever experience. I was lame, viewing people with aspirations of financial and material security so many of the rest of us take for granted through an idealized, even orientalized lens. Did these folks have any less of a right to participate in the modern world and all of the comforts and thrills it offered?
As we once again descended, the landscape turned into one of washed-out, generic, car-clogged awfulness, yet the people went about their day like they do anywhere—ideal or terrible.
Once we got back downtown the periodic rain abated, and suddenly UB looked sexy, at least from certain angles. Money does talk, and that afternoon, as Mongolia suddenly began to resemble the shiny, stacked-up streets of Korea, I heard a voice in my ear.
“Stay here,” it whispered. “It’s good here.”
And while I knew it was, I couldn’t wait to get far away, into that rough, beautiful part of the country that—like the ger district—may be a tough place to call home, but offered treasures far more precious than found in any swank cafe or luxury brand shop.
Cool stuff. It almost looks like hillside barrios in South America. Did you feel safe?
Yeah it felt very safe though we were there during the day. I suppose it could get rough at night but surely the dogs were far more dangerous than any humans