Mongolian Towns

Mongolians are not very good at towns, and Ölgii was no exception. The capital of an aigmag or province the size of Holland, it felt like an abandoned outpost at world's end… Mongolia's few towns are administrative gestures, state projects, built within the past fifty years, to provide the facilities of modern life — education, health, and wrestling arenas — for sceptical herdsmen. They are all composed of the same ingredients, as if officials, unfamiliar with towns, were working from a check list: a barren-looking square, a town hall, a theatre, a museum, a school, a hospital, a sports stadium. In their cement drabness the buildings are barely distinguishable from each other. Mix in a few potholes, add a lot of waste ground, and the desolation is complete… After the vistas of noble grasslands glimpsed from the aeroplane, Ölgii was a bitter arrival, a town built by people who hated towns.