Mongolia
Not your run-of-the-mill country. I have long been fascinated by Mongolia and actually routed my characters in my latest thriller, Chita Quest, through Mongolia in order to justify all the research that I wanted to do. This will be only the first of several posts about Mongolia.
Why should you be even the slightest bit interested in Mongolia? Well for one, there is a high probability that nobody you know has any idea about the country—more likely, what they do “know” is wrong. Imagine how you could make major points in a trivia contest…For example, the name of the capital is a Jeopardy question (Ulaan Bataar)…
Here’s a map:
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/lgcolor/mncolor.htm
I have never been to Mongolia but it is high on my bucket list. In the meantime, I trolled the internet, interviewed (grilled, actually) the few people I could find who had been there, and read several books, the most notable is Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford http://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World/dp/0609809644
A couple tidbits about the great Genghis directly from Professor Weatherford: In twenty five years, the Mongols conquered more territory than the Romans managed in four hundred; whether measured by the number of people defeated, the number of countries annexed, or the total area of land, Genghis conquered more than twice as much as any other man in history. From Mongolia and on a horse, which he apparently hardly ever dismounted, being busy conquering and all…His empire lasted over 150 years—Kublai Khan of Marco Polo fame was his grandson. His blood line was nearly obliterated by the Soviets—yes those Soviets—in the 1920s, nearly 700 years later. His contributions to today’s world are clearly laid out in Weatherford’s wonderful book, which by the way, reads like a novel. And, yes, I realize Genghis was not Mr. Congeniality. Although, and here’s another little-known-but-interesting-Jeopardy-type factoid, according to several recent studies, Y chromosonal lineage carried by likely male-line descendants of Genghis Khan number about 16 million men world-wide or about 0.5 per cent of the all the males on earth (1 in 200). So, he did actually get off his horse more than a few times.
Mongolia is a large landlocked country between two larger countries—Russia and China. Located on mountains and plateaus, it is one of the world’s highest countries, with an average elevation of 1,580 meters (5,180 feet). Mongolia suffers temperature extremes (Ulaan Bataar is the coldest capital city in the world…the only one with an average temperature of less than 32 degrees F—another Jeopardy question), and southern Mongolia is dominated by the Gobi desert.
Apart from all the history associated with Mongolia and the Mongols, what is crucial to us today is what is going on in this undeveloped country of just less than three million people. Mongolia is the site of probably the last great mineral rush in history. It is jammed packed with oil, gas, copper, gold, silver, coal, you name it. It is estimated that Mongolia’s economy will be the second fastest growing economy in the world in 2014. Not surprising, the surge of investment money threatens the agrarian, nomadic culture and landscape with corruption and pollution, not to mention the chaos from the influx of foreigners. http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/03/23/mongolias-economic-prospects-and-challenges/
As usual, the National Geographic has a wonderful site on Mongolia:
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/mongolia-photos/
Here’s another with more pictures of Ulaan Bataar: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/ulaanbaatar/leong-photography#/01-models-child-acrobat-concert-670.jpg
I’ll get back to Mongolia in a future post, after I take a swing at the other Asian countries featured in Chita Quest.