Happiness of the Peoples of the World: Mongolia

In connection with the launch of a joint project of the Eurasian Tourism Security Council and the Department of Happiness of the Eurasian Peoples’ Assembly “Happiness of the Peoples of the World”, Anastasia Pavlova, Chairman of the Eurasian Tourism Security Council, talks about countries where the happiness of their citizens is a priority for state activity.

Nomadic happiness of the land of dinosaurs

In the updated ranking of the world's happiest countries for 2022, Mongolia ranked 68th out of 146 countries, moving up two places from the previous year.

Contrast

Mongolia is very contrasting: skyscrapers coexist with yurts, and modern SUVs can rush past fossilized dinosaur eggs, which are still found in the desert.

Very cold winters and very hot summers are one of the features of Mongolia that surprises visitors to the country. The lowest and highest temperatures are usually recorded in the Gobi Desert region with its multi-colored sands.

Gobi Desert

Mongolia has the third largest hot desert in the world - the Gobi, which the Mongols divide into Black, Red and Yellow because of the different colours of the landscape.

Wonderful coloured sands of the Gobi Khongor Els desert can "sing". On the dunes, which reach a height of about 100–300 meters, the wind glides and creates sounds that are similar to the playing of a trumpet and the beat of drums.

The grains of sand create a real orchestra. Experienced tourists say that you need to listen to the dunes at sunset, when, in addition to sounds, nature creates unusual colours.

Find a dinosaur

One of the entertainments for the guests of Mongolia is to try to find ancient fossils themselves, many succeed. Such excavations are mainly carried out in the Gobi desert, but the finds are forbidden to be taken out of the country.

In addition to dinosaurs, fossils of an ancient rabbit, whose age is 55 million years, were discovered on the territory of Mongolia.

Nomadic addresses

Mongolian cities and streets are constantly changing their shape due to the movements of nomads. After all, they live not only in the steppes: mobile yurts can be located in villages and cities, even next to skyscrapers. Therefore, a single universal system was introduced - a kind of code of letters and numbers. The smaller the object, the longer its address will be.

Mongolia has special boarding schools for nomadic children, only 2% of the country's population illiterate. This is a very impressive figure - in Africa, for example, no country can boast of a similar achievement.

Camel festival

Every year Mongolia hosts the Festival of a Thousand Camels, which is designed to protect the two-humped variety of these animals. Now Bactrian camels are found only in Mongolia and in one of the provinces of China.