| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia-As the sun rises over the frozen steppes, mothers and grandmothers across Mongolia emerge from their homes-white, felt-covered, round tents called gers. Hands hidden from the cold in the long sleeves of their warm deels, they clutch a ladle in one hand and an urn of milk tea in the other. Offering tsainii deej urguh, they throw a ladle-full of milk tea into the sky to honor the heavens. For many Mongolian women, the view is of blue sky and the open steppe, the horizon perhaps dotted with their family's herd of goats and sheep. But for those who live within sight of the capital, the panorama is quite different. Before them lies a vast city, home to more than a million people, jammed into an urban sprawl of closely packed gers, Soviet-era apartments, and new high-rises. Yet in the heart of the Mongolian winter, they can see none of this. Instead, a thick, gray layer of pollution obscures the horizon. Ulaanbaatar, capital of the most sparsely populated country on the planet and renowned for its pristine countryside and nomadic herdsmen, has some of the world's most toxic air.
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