Driving South Towards Jargalant, Mongolian Tracks In Green Grasslands
Mongolia is a landlocked sovereign state in East Asia covering 1,564,000 square kilometres, making it the 19th largest and one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, with a population of around 3 million people only. The country contains very little arable land: much of its area is covered by grassy steppe, with mountains to the north and west and the Gobi Desert to the south. It is bordered by China to the south and Russia to the north. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to about 45% of the country's population. In 1206, Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, and his grandson Kublai Khan conquered China to establish the Yuan dynasty. In the 16th century, Tibetan Buddhism began to spread in Mongolia. By the early 1900s, almost one-third of the adult male population were Buddhist monks. In 1924, the Mongolian People's Republic was declared as a Soviet satellite state. After the anti-Communist revolutions of 1989, Mongolia conducted its own peaceful democratic revolution in early 1990. This led to a multi-party system, a new constitution of 1992, and transition to a market economy. In most of Mongolia, there are no roads, but just tracks made by cars & trucks crossing prairies. When a track becomes too bumpy after having been overused, drivers create another one etc. This results in several grassless tracks, more or less paralell to one another. The challenge for drivers then becomes to pick the right not-so-bumpy track. Of course, they often change from one track to another hoping the new one will be better. Such conditions make travelling quite slow, and you can expect to travel no more than an average of 20 or 30km per hour.
Size: 4025px × 2673px
Location: Jargalant, Mongolia, Asia
Photo credit: © François-Olivier Dommergues / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: asia, buddhism, buddhist, culture, desert, eastern, grass, horse, isolated, landlocked, mongolia, mongolian, mountains, nomad, nomadic, nomads, remote, republic, satellite, shaman, shamanism, soviet, state, steppe, tibetan, traditional
