Infinite vastness: A country four times the size of Germany and with the population of Berlin. In 2015, I spent 19 days in Mongolia, the land of infinite vastness, the taiga, the steppe and the Gobi desert. I wanted to see all this and more and was extremely excited to see what it will be like to sleep in a yurt.

the arrival

My flight took me from Frankfurt to Istanbul, on to Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) and then finally to Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia. In the airport building of Ulan Bator I was quite astonished when I walked straight towards a Fluke thermal imaging camera on arrival. I have been working for Fluke since 2010 and think it's great that the Mongolians appreciate quality. ;-) So this was my first mobile phone picture on the 3-week expedition trip to come, through Mongolia.

the yurts (gers)

The yurts (Gers) were my hotel on this trip. During these 19 days of the trip we stayed 16 times in yurts (gers) and it was great. Sometimes it was a bit fresh and you had the feeling to sleep outside when it was stormy. The single beds were placed in a circle along the outer yurt-wall, usually there were three single beds per yurt.

A bit about the yurts (gers):

The word Jurte borrowed from French yourte or German Jurte, which means tent, campground, country, home or place of residence. The yurt is the usual accommodation of nomadic peoples, it is both house and home. In Mongolian, yurt means ger. It can be assumed that the yurt looks back on a history of more than 2000 years of development. It is not only the traditional dwelling of the Mongolians, but also of the nomadic peoples in Central Asia, Southern Siberia and north of the Great Wall.

the mongolian throat singing

One evening after dinner at the camp, a group of students, dressed in traditional costumes, surprised us and made us sing.

The singing is called overtone singing. By changing the position of the throat and the oral cavity, individual overtones can be amplified when singing a fundamental. This vocal practice is especially known in Siberia, among the Tuva, in Mongolia as chömij (literally "throat") and in Tibetan shamanic chants. Overtone singing was traditionally used when weighing children, herding herds or hunting reindeers.