Khovd

Khovd owes its existence to empire. In the 18th century, after the Qing destroyed the Dzungar Khanate of the western Mongols, the dynasty needed a permanent administrative and military base in the far west. A fortified garrison was established in the region and was moved to its present site on the Buyant river after 1757, becoming the seat of the Qing amban who governed the western territories. A walled compound held the offices, barracks and storehouses, and Chinese merchants settled beside it to trade with the surrounding herders.

The town's position made it a crossroads between the Altai, the Great Lakes Depression, Xinjiang to the south-west and Siberia to the north, and caravans, soldiers and officials passed through it for a century and a half. After Mongolia declared independence in 1911, the Qing garrison at Khovd held out until Mongol forces besieged and took the fortress in 1912, one of the decisive events of the independence struggle in the west, and the ruins of the walls remained a landmark afterwards.

Under the socialist state after 1921, Khovd became the capital of the modern province, gaining apartment blocks, a hospital, schools and, later, Khovd University. Herding was collectivised, and irrigation schemes along the Buyant produced vegetables and the melons the town is now known for. Since 1990 the province has lived on herding, cashmere, farming, cross-border trade with China across the border to the south, and a slow growth in visitors bound for the lakes and the Altai.

Khovd province is one of the most ethnically varied in Mongolia, and the town shows it. Khalkha Mongols live alongside Kazakhs, Dörvöd, Torguud, Zakhchin, Uriankhai, Myangad and other groups, several of them descended from the Oirats of the western steppe and from communities resettled here under the Qing. Many keep their own dialects, embroidery, clothing and songs, and marriages, funerals and new year customs differ between them. Buddhism and shamanic practice sit alongside the Islam of Kazakh families.

Music and performance are taken seriously for a town of this size. Western Mongolia is known for the long song, for the tsuur end-blown flute of the Uriankhai, for biyelgee, a dance performed largely with the upper body while seated or standing in a confined space, and for throat singing, and Khovd University keeps these traditions taught and performed. Craft skills — saddlery, felt, embroidery and silverwork — remain part of household life.

The calendar mixes traditions in the same way. Naadam in July brings wrestling, archery and horse racing to grounds outside the town, with the province's wrestlers closely followed; Tsagaan Sar fills homes with visitors and steamed dumplings in late winter; Kazakh families mark Nauryz in March. Hospitality is the shared rule: a guest is fed before being asked any business, tea is poured continuously, and small gifts are exchanged on arrival and departure.

Khovd has a population in the region of 30,000, which makes it one of the larger places in western Mongolia and the service centre for a province of herding districts spread over great distances. Work is in the provincial administration, schools, the hospital, the university and its colleges, trade, transport and construction, with herding families across the countryside bringing in cashmere, meat, hides and dairy and taking out supplies.

Agriculture matters more here than in most of Mongolia. The irrigated fields along the Buyant grow potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and above all melons and watermelons, which are trucked to Ulaanbaatar and sold at stalls along the roads in late summer. Cashmere from goats remains the main cash income of the province, and prices for it shape household fortunes from year to year.

Most families live in fenced yards with a house and often a ger, heated by stoves that smoke over the town on still winter days, while a small number of Soviet-era blocks stand near the centre. Water is carried from standpipes in much of the town. Life is early and seasonal, with the market busiest in the morning and the streets quiet after dark in the cold months. The pressures are those of the whole west: distance from the capital, high prices for goods hauled across the country, young people leaving to study or work, and dzud winters that can destroy a family's herd and push them into town for good.

Khovd's table is built on mutton, goat and dairy, with more bread, noodles and vegetables than the eastern steppe provides. The Mongolian standards are eaten daily: buuz, mutton dumplings steamed in tiers; khuushuur, the same filling fried flat; tsuivan, thick noodles steamed over meat and then fried with cabbage, carrot and onion; and guriltai shöl, a plain mutton and noodle soup. Borts, air dried strips of meat, are crumbled into winter soups.

The province's mix of peoples shows at the table. Kazakh households serve beshbarmak, boiled mutton or horse meat over broad sheets of noodle with onion broth, and pile fried baursak dough for guests, while Mongol families make khorkhog, mutton cooked with fire-heated stones in a sealed churn, for celebrations. Dairy runs through the summer in every household: aaruul, hard dried curd; urum, thick scalded cream; byaslag, a mild pressed cheese; and airag, lightly fermented mare's milk.

What Khovd is famous for elsewhere in Mongolia is fruit. The irrigated fields by the Buyant produce melons and watermelons of a quality unusual this far north, and in August and September they are stacked at the market and sold by the roadside on the long drive east. Vegetables from the same plots make salads and soups more common here than in the herding provinces. Suutei tsai, salted milk tea, is poured at all hours, and vodka is the usual strong drink where it is drunk at all.