Smog

There are many beautiful things about the different seasons in Bayankhongor. Autumn was nice because the few trees we do have turned all sorts of familiar Fall colors and the weather went from unbearably hot to perfect during the day. Now that we've been in Bayankhongor for our first Winter, we know that it's much prettier with snow on the ground to cover up the sandy, flying dust, but there's another menace in the air these days: Smog.

Our apartment, like all the permanent business, residential and government buildings in our sprawling town of around 30,000, is heated from one of several shared coal-fired hot water stations. Unfortunately, this usually doesn't get our apartment over 60F (15.5C) in our warmest room and our kitchen barely ever gets above 50 (10C), so we supplement with an electric space heater (electricity comes from UB, incidentally). Everyone else, probably 70% of the residents here heat their gers mostly with coal and some wood. Add that to the omnipresent pits of smoldering garbage, and it's not a fun situation to breath in.

There are few trees in our province at all and those are to our north by a few hours drive at least. Coal is available here relatively cheaply and represents a life line to warmth in the Winter because it burns hotter and longer than wood anyway. Both put off a lot of soot and smoke into the air and since the weather has been consistently cold (though relatively mild for Mongolian Winter with temperatures at or around zero for the last couple weeks), and perhaps do to other meteorological and geological factors not moving the hanging air from our tucked little valley, the smog has really become a problem. In fact, in the early mornings and late evenings, the city is blanketed by a layer of white and gray so thick we can't see more than 60 or 70 meters and sometimes less.

I didn't really notice the smog so much until Tysen and I went for a little hike up one of the mountains on Sunday afternoon. You can really tell from these pictures what a menace the coal and wood exhaust can be.

On our hike, Tysen and I were on the mountain in the background here. Tysen took this photo around Christmastime from the Stupa that holds radio towers.

This is a similar shot we took in early September.

The river is frozen over and this is a pretty scene made slightly ominous by the smog.

As dusk approached, we made our way back toward the city. Tysen posed for a photo.

Once we were back to the city center, I was actually a little lost. There is a huge building to the left about 50 meters that you completely can't see.

Obviously we're not alone in this smog problem. Virtually every developed and developing city in the world has a smog problem from time to time. The problem has been around for centuries, probably as long as people have been living closely and burning things to stay warm. Thankfully we don't have many cars here in Bayankhongor or millions of people.

I have to say, though, we really did enjoy those S'mores we made over Tysen's fire last week.