Mongolia

Mongolia sits on a high plateau deep in the interior of Asia, where winters are long and bitter and the sky is clear on most days. The Altai rise in the far west to glaciers, the Khangai holds the centre, and taiga around Lake Khövsgöl reaches north towards Siberia, with grass steppes rolling between. The south belongs to the Gobi, mostly gravel and scrub rather than sand, where American expeditions of the 1920s dug nests of dinosaur eggs out of the red Flaming Cliffs.

Steppe empires rose here again and again, from the Xiongnu who harried Han China to the Turkic khaganates whose inscriptions survive in the Orkhon valley. In 1206 an assembly of the clans proclaimed Temüjin as Chinggis Khaan, and within two generations Mongol armies held an empire from Korea to eastern Europe; his grandson Kublai founded China’s Yuan dynasty. Tibetan Buddhism took hold in the sixteenth century. Qing rule ended in 1911, a Soviet-backed revolution followed in 1921, and peaceful protests ended one-party rule in 1990.

Herding families still move their gers, round felt tents, between summer and winter pastures, and each July the Naadam festival stages wrestling, horse racing with child jockeys and archery. Throat singers sound two notes at once, and Mongolian wrestlers such as Hakuhō reached the top rank of Japanese sumo. Mining drives the economy, with copper and gold from Oyu Tolgoi and coal from Tavan Tolgoi, and Gobi goats yield fine cashmere.