Winter Part Two: Ulaanbaator Edition

If you were ever wondering how you could make negative temperatures feel warm, I am here to tell you.  Just travel somewhere even colder and then go back to the still negative, however slightly warmer place, and you will find yourself sweating.  UB is quite a bit colder than Bayankhongor.  I recently was in the capitol for a week and came back to BX to find myself wanting to walk around without a coat in the negatives.  Anyway, these are just some observations about the winter in UB.

The Mongol shuffle

The sidewalks are iced over in UB.  There is no sidewalk shoveling really in Mongolia.  It is very easy to slip and slide, so you have to watch your step. Really, taking steps is dangerous, so all the Mongolians just shuffle along without actually picking up their feet. It was pretty adorable however to watch parents shuffling about while joyfully dragging their children along the ice next to them.  Older adults also take part in the sidewalk fun, building up with some fast shuffles which leads into a long ice glide, or by holding tight to their friends so that they can slide with every step.  As for me, I just tried not to fall too much.

The smog.

Fun Fact: UB is the most polluted city in the world.  It is very smoggy, and most always the weather forecast just says ‘smoke.’  You can feel it right away when you step outside, and you will cough when you do.  I have never smoked, but I can only imagine that breathing in the smog is like smoking a pack of cigarettes. You can literally taste it, and the smell gets into your clothes.  I often found myself wondering when I was indoors, who I had been around that had been smoking, when the truth is, the smell is just from the pollution.

not so gross graffiti

Sidewalk graffiti

I have heard a rumor that it is a little rude to blow your nose in public here in Mongolia.  I do not know if this is true or not, but I can say that I haven’t ever seen a Mongolian blow their nose.  What I have seen is that Mongolians really love to snot rocket- just holding one nostril and shooting snot out onto the ground.  So everywhere you walked the sidewalk is full of frozen snot rockets and spit.  Also, other notable sidewalk graffiti include, frozen vomit.

The negatives

When it is super cold, you don’t really feel the cold…you just feel pain.

Frozen eyelashes

I have never experienced frozen eyelashes before, but if you are out in these -30 degree temps long enough, it happens.  It just feels like your eyes are really moist…and then when you are in someplace warm, the ice on your lashes just melts and drips down your face.  Eye-wear in such cold temperatures is also quite difficult. You will most likely be wearing a scarf or something over your mouth and nose because it is so cold. The difficult part is that when you breathe, the warm air that leaves your body is funneled directly up to your glasses because of the scarf.  When this happens, your glasses fog up, and within a few seconds time, that fog turns into ice on your lenses.  Most of the time, I find myself walking around with my glasses in my pocket. But, with all the smog in the capitol, you can’t see more than a few feet in front of you, so really, who needs glasses anyway!

Sidewalk salesmen

People stand on the sidewalks, and open up a little store just by laying out items like tea, candy, or socks on a small table or box.  The amazing thing is that they still do this in the dead of winter when it is beyond freezing out.  Their feet are wrapped in many blankets until they look like a giant’s feet. 

Warmth

I stayed at a hostel during my time in the capitol, aka I stayed someplace that there was heat…on the inside!  Usually at night in my ger, I bundle up in my blankets, but in this hostel I found myself sleeping without a blanket at all!  It was actually so incredibly hot, that I and the other hostel guests (2 other ger dwellers) slept with the window open just to keep it at a normal temperature.  Normally in my ger, I find myself waking up quite early so that I can make a fire, but with such warmth in the hostel, I found myself sleeping into the late morning just because I could! Luxury.

plane view on the way to UB