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Where we do it > Mongolia - 10 facts

1. A traditional game still played all over Mongolia involves Shagai, or sheep’s ankle bones. Shagai can be used for many different games, from telling one’s fortune, to horse races (where the ankle bones are laid out in rows, and then individual bones are thrown, much like dice to see who goes forward along the row of bones), flicking shagai, and throwing shagai up in the air along with a small chain and seeing how many you can catch as they fall back to the ground. Shagai are found in every Mongolian home, new or traditional, and in every kindergarten classroom.

2. Most of the country is hot in the summer and extremely cold in the winter, with January averages dropping as low as -30ºC (-22ºF). Ulaanbaatar has the coldest average temperature of any national capital in the world.

3. Starting in 1206, Genghis Khan and his successors consolidated and expanded the Mongol Empire into the largest contiguous land empire in world history. At its height, the empire encompassed the majority of the territories from southeast Asia to central Europe.

4. Currently, mongolia is the nineteenth-largest country in the world.

5. The official language of Mongolia is Khalkha Mongol, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet, but there are variety of different dialects across the country. In the more western parts of the country, where there is more ethnic diversity, primarily due to populations of ethnic Tuvans and Kazakhs, the Tuvan language and Kazakh language, among others, are also spoken.

6. South of Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital city, lie the Bogd Khan mountains, which are the oldest protected area in the world – the ruler of Mongolia proclaimed in the mid 17th century that there should be no felling of trees, hunting of animals or collecting of berries or nuts in these hills. Similar rules still apply today, but are sadly much flaunted by wood cutters, berry and nut pickers.

7. Yak hair is almost as soft as cashmere and makes beautiful sweaters and other clothes.

8. A summer delicacy in Mongolia is roast marmot. Traditionally hot stones were put inside, and it was placed on a hot fire for the fur to burn off and to cook it from the outside as well as from the inside. These days most Mongolians use a blowtorch to cook the outside.

9. Lake Huvsgul in the north of Mongolia contains 2% of the world’s fresh water, and is one of the least polluted lakes in the world – with no industry within a thousand kilometers. Sadly this could all change with increasing numbers of tourist camps with toilets that flush straight into the lake and a number of trucks and other vehicles that lie at its bottom, having fallen through the ice in winter.

10. A Mongolian ger (the traditional round felt tent of Mongolian nomads – called a yurt in Russian) goes from zero degrees centigrade to twenty degrees centigrade in thirty minutes, once a fire is lit!

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