[Mister Da]

You’d think any description of a complex building would include a picture or 10. Nope, we must use our imagination.

[tenger]

The gers they use in Ulaan Baatar are there out of necessity. They can be very very warm in the winter. I've been monitoring UB's winter, and it's experiencing many many days -10 and -20 temp days.

The problem is that the gers are heated by coal. Supposedly there's the good kind of coal and a not so good (but cheap) kind of coal for heating (that's about as technical as I can get with coal). In UB the Ger communities use the not so good kind. Hence in the winter, when the temps are -20 and -30, everyone heats their gers to the max. UB is then the most polluted city in the world (even worse than China cities).

I lived in AK for 4 years and Mongolia for 2. A friend wanted to know which was colder. I told her the temps in North Pole were colder, per se, but they could turn the heat up and down however they wanted. In UB as an apartment dweller (back in 1992), there was only one thermostat in the city...and we didn't have it! The city gave you what they thought was enough heat. So it was a cozy 50-55 inside our apartment.