Two travel bees

Through the Ulaanbaatar concrete jungle

We flew from Copenhagen via Moscow to the capital of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar (Mongolian meaning “Red Hero”). Ulaanbaatar is a city with a strong Soviet-style influence from the 70 year-long socialist era in Mongolia (they still consider the Russian’s their brothers), with large concrete apartment blocks and dominant public buildings and landmarks.

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Surrounding the city center are vast Mongolian Ger districts where almost a million people live in traditional white nomadic tent structures, heated with simple iron stoves which together with the large number of cars, creates a grey lid of air pollution over the city. At the same time, the city is blooming with a booming amount of new glass-façade apartment buildings under construction in the inner city.

The long main street, Peace Avenue, divides inner city in two and offers an endless number of coffee shops (Café Bene) and the main shopping mall “The Department Store”. Southeast in the city lies the large Black Market with vendors selling everything from flooring, wallpaper, shoes, food and cashmere where we bought one Mongolian cashmere scarf we could squeeze into our hand-luggage.

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 Ulaanbaatar is something very special and different from anything we have visited before. We enjoyed exploring the concrete jungle for 4 days and its offerings of food and shops with a Mongolian twist and getting to know the very  good-natured Mongols.

 

Ulaanbaatar travel tips:

1. Eat like a Mongol. Though the Mongolian cuisine is not very widely known, try out the very inexpensive local food at the small food houses in the city. You’ll find that the vegetable and beef soups, the dumplings and the milk rice (almost "risengrød") are not very different from what we eat in Scandinavia. Our favorite was the steamed bread!
    

2. Cash. You can hardly use your international credit card anywhere in Mongolia. Withdraw your Mongolian Tugriks at the Department Store (at the same floor as the cinema) at Peace Avenue
    

3. Buy cashmere at the Black market. After China, Mongolia is the largest producer of cashmere in the world. We bought a cashmere scarf for around 22USD. The market is huge and the wool-section/alley a bit difficult to spot. Try looking for wool sweaters hanging on the wall and you will most likely find a few scarfs on a table.
    

4. Go by local bus from the airport. The bus costs about USD 0.2 and stops at Peace Avenue. Show the driver the Mongolian name for Peace Avenue (Enkh Taivny Örgön Chölöö) and they will be happy to help you getting off at the right stop. The Mongols are kind and happy to help with directions if you’re in doubt.