Ulaanbaatar: a warning from the coldest capital on Earth

乌兰巴托:来自地球上最寒冷首都的警示

Today in Focus

2025-07-11

24 分钟
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Tracey McVeigh heads to Mongolia to find out about the country’s increasingly brutal winters and dry summers, while Badruun Gardi reflects on how the changes threaten the nomadic way of life. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus
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  • This is The Guardian.

  • Today, a warning from the coldest capital on Earth.

  • Once upon a time...

  • Actually, for the vast majority of human history, people lived as nomads.

  • In Mongolia, one third of the country still does,

  • herding bands of hundreds of animals across the country's vast and pristine grasslands.

  • But this way of life that is so essentially human in 2025 is getting harder.

  • More and more Mongolians are trading the nomadic life for the big city, Ulaanbaatar.

  • And there, they're facing a shocking new problem.

  • From The Guardian, I'm Michael Safi.

  • Today in Focus, Mongolia's poisoned air.

  • parts of The Guardian that ends up producing our most interesting stories,

  • the global development section.

  • And you recently went to Mongolia, of all places.

  • Tell me about your journey there.

  • Yeah, I was lucky enough to go there.

  • And you feel like you're in the other end of the world, which, which you are.

  • It's kind of sandwiched between Russia and China,

  • the most extraordinary geography and the most extraordinary place.

  • It looks like...