Ulaanbaatar

The city began in 1639 as Örgöö, a camp of felt tents built around the young Zanabazar, the first Jebtsundamba Khutughtu and head of Mongolian Buddhism. For well over a century it moved with its monks across the steppe, and it settled on the present site by the Tuul river in 1778. As Ikh Khüree — Urga to foreigners — it grew into a town of temple courtyards, monastic colleges and Chinese trading quarters, and it became the religious capital of the Khalkha Mongols and a stop on the tea caravan route between China and Siberia.

In 1911, as the Qing dynasty collapsed, the Bogd Khan was enthroned here as ruler of an autonomous Mongolia, and the town became a political capital as well as a religious one. The following decade brought Chinese occupation, the brief and violent rule of the White Russian officer Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, and in 1921 the revolutionary forces of Damdin Sükhbaatar, who entered the city with Soviet support. In 1924 it was renamed Ulaanbaatar, "Red Hero".

The purges of the 1930s destroyed most of the monasteries in and around the city and killed thousands of monks; Gandan was among the very few religious sites allowed to reopen. Soviet planners then rebuilt the capital as a city of grid avenues, apartment blocks, factories and a central square, with a theatre, a university and a stadium. Since the democratic revolution of 1990, whose demonstrations filled Sükhbaatar Square, the population has risen steeply as herding families moved in, and mining wealth has added glass towers, shopping centres and new suburbs to the Soviet skeleton.

Ulaanbaatar sets the tone of modern Mongolian life. Its universities, theatres, television studios and recording studios reach every province, and its fashions and slang travel outward with students and migrants. The State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet on the central square, the national song and dance ensembles and folk groups playing the morin khuur, the horsehead fiddle, and performing khöömei throat singing, all work here, while hip hop and rock grew up in the apartment blocks and ger districts and now dominate the charts.

The city is also the centre of Mongolian Buddhism. Gandantegchinlen Monastery is the seat of the revived monastic community, and families come to temples for blessings, name-giving and readings at the new year. Shamanic practice has returned alongside it, and a Kazakh Muslim minority and small Christian congregations add to the mix. Ovoo cairns on the passes out of the city are still circled three times clockwise by drivers.

Naadam is at its grandest here. The opening ceremony is held at the National Sports Stadium, wrestlers in open-fronted vests and shorts compete through the afternoon, archers shoot at rows of small leather targets, and child jockeys race long distances across the steppe outside the city. In winter, at Tsagaan Sar, households receive visitors in order of seniority, greeting elders with arms held palms-up beneath theirs. Manners are informal but firm about hospitality: food and drink offered to a guest are expected to be at least touched.

About 1.8 million people live in Ulaanbaatar, close to half of Mongolia's population, and the number keeps rising as families leave the countryside after hard winters. The city is two cities in one: a built-up core of Soviet apartment blocks, glass towers, malls and offices in the valley floor, and the ger districts spreading up the surrounding slopes on fenced plots, many without piped water or sewerage. Mining, government, banking, construction, trade and a growing services and technology sector provide most formal jobs, and the country's wealth from copper, coal and gold is managed from offices here.

The two defining problems are traffic and air. Car ownership has grown far faster than the road network, and rush hour clogs the few east–west avenues. From November to February, coal and wood stoves in the ger districts fill the valley with smoke that the surrounding hills trap, making winter air pollution one of the worst in the world despite a ban on raw coal introduced in 2019. Dzud winters in the countryside send more families to the city each spring, adding to both pressures.

Daily rhythms are those of any large Asian city: early starts, long commutes, lunch in canteens, children in crowded schools that often run in shifts, and shopping in supermarkets and open-air markets alike. Summer empties the city at weekends as residents drive out to country cottages, ger camps and relatives' herds in Töv province, and most families keep ties to the countryside that no amount of city living has broken.

The everyday food of the capital is the food of the steppe, cooked indoors. Buuz, mutton dumplings steamed in tiers, are eaten year-round and in enormous numbers at Tsagaan Sar; khuushuur are the same filling in flat pasties fried until blistered. Tsuivan, thick noodles steamed over meat and then fried with mutton and a little cabbage, carrot and onion, is the standard canteen lunch, and guriltai shöl is a plain mutton and noodle soup. Bansh, smaller boiled dumplings, are dropped into soup or into milky tea. Potatoes, carrots and cabbage from the Selenge farms are the usual vegetables.

Dairy runs through everything. Suutei tsai, salted milk tea, is poured for guests at any hour; aaruul, hard dried curd, is stacked in markets and chewed like sweets; urum, a thick scalded cream, is eaten with bread. In summer, airag, lightly fermented mare's milk, arrives from the countryside and is sold by roadside stalls on the roads out of the city. Khorkhog, mutton cooked in a sealed churn with hot stones, belongs to trips out to the camps rather than to restaurants.

The city also eats more widely than anywhere else in Mongolia. Korean barbecue and noodle houses are common in the centre; Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Indian and European restaurants cluster in the centre; and a café culture of espresso, cake and bakery bread has grown quickly in the central blocks. Vodka is the usual strong drink, with Chinggis among the best-known brands, and local lagers are widely sold.