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the traffic here is something else there was going to be a 5 km drive it's going to take 2 to 3 hours it almost looks like you could be in Latin America Brazil you've got the FAS on the hillside there's dog attacks here yeah very often uh and big dog what's cooking here for L milk tea with little bit of rice sheep tail sheep tail local toilet here these people do not have any form of heating apart from fire they don't have running water do you think the government's handling the economy and the standard of living of its citizens well they're failing 100% Soviets taking down Nazi Germany here high levels of pollution many times over the safe limit the fases can actually get severely impacted children can often
come out with behavioral and cognitive issues so that's a bear over there so this is a bear because he's a shaman Spirit enters into his body the spirit asks to you know like feed it with sometimes you know like some milk maybe with some for what comes to mind when you think of Mongolia Wide Open Spaces horse riding yes these are all part of mongolia's Rich culture but did you know that mongolia's capital city is the most polluted capital city in the world the pollution is so bad here that adults and children alike face major health complications it's also the coldest capital city in the world temperatures reaching - 40° in winter with a couple million people living in some of the
most brutal environments in the world huge power plants L out plumes of smoke over the city's Skyline big Financial districts Tower over informal neighborhoods this is ulam Batar mongolia's capital city this is what it's like living in the worst air pollution in the world 2/3 of people are dissatisfied with the state of mongolia's welcome to Anan Batar capital city of Mongolia fascinating extremely unique one of the most unique cities I think I've ever been to big country Mongolia huge country but majority of the population actually come here to the City to look for a better life
unfortunately a lot of people actually fall through the cracks in the city they come here to try and build a better life because there's less opportunities out in the plains and they come here and it doesn't work out for a lot of them so 50% of the city actually live in temporary housing and 50% of them live in poverty so that means 25% of this city live in poverty that's quite a shockingly high number so today we're going to explore around the city meet some local people in all different kinds of neighborhoods The Good The Bad and The ugly try and get a broad spectrum understanding so Mongolia was under Soviet rule for 70 years so you can see a lot of the kind of Hangover of that
you can see riding in cilic and you'll see the architecture through the day it's very interesting it's a mixture of many architectures but you can definitely see Soviet influence radiating through the city so we've come to the top of this hill and you can see the scenes here are absolutely insane definitely not what comes to mind at least for me when I think of Mongolia I think you know you think of Wide Open Spaces horse riding yurs or as they're locally known here gers so these neighborhoods are called G neighborhoods yur neighborhoods but you can see there's a combination of yurs and this kind of informal housing these people do not have any form of heating
apart from fire they don't have running water they have to go to Wells to get their water that's year round so in winter when it's- 40 on average in one of the most polluted cities in the world they're out here getting water on their backs walking up and down these Hills these huge sprawling neighborhoods I mean this is quite something profound to see so here's the local toilet here not much privacy though so we've met a local family and they've invited us into the G so it'll be interesting to see inside sem oh wow beautiful house you have is this standard for a girl or is this quite an up Market one do you think I think it's quite an up Market one usually it's not like this what's cooking here for
lunch milk tea with little bit of rice sheep tail tea and rice yes what's the temperature inside in winter in here very warm so she's very satisfyed obviously you have to go outside to go to the bathroom is that quite intense when you go outside cuz it's so cold or you're just used to it now I got used to it all right their houses are not connected to water and heating system so they have to burn coal or wood to generate here in their houses Okay so we've met this local lady and her son and they've just gone to pick up some water from the well how far do you have to walk today to get the water uh maybe 5 minutes of walk what do you do for a living her profession is a barber is it a good life in
Mongolia she said uh if you work and live it's a nice good life thank you so this is the well here in here's the hose this is the office where you pay 2 MNT for 2 L very affordable Okay so we've come to one of the wells and we've met the lovely local lady that's running it in winter is it hard living here because I've heard that it's like- 40° and it's very high pollution t the yeah the air pollution is very hard but my job is very important job because we have to provide people with healthy and safe water she wears like uh three lers of three four lers of clothes during the winter
time we've actually met a local Sharman who's invited us into his G here so that's a bear over there so this is a bear skin is it expensive to buy a bear skin approximately 800 us oh and these are wolf skins oh there's there's the head there's the nose of the wolf because he's a shaman Spirit enters into his body that Spirit asked specifically to have this kind of bare skin the spirit asks to you know like feed it with sometimes you know like some milk I don't know I didn't specifically ask but I'm thinking maybe with some vka you know so they perceive that it is alive and then he's doing ab workouts in the meantime what does being a shaman in Mongolia entail Shamanism comes from his ancestors four generations above him okay and he's saying that he doesn't
know his ancestors well because of The anti-religious Purge in 1939 the end of 1930s over 10,000 monks were killed by the Mongolian local government are you happy with the state of Mongolia at the minute do you think the government's handling the country well they're not leading the country well rather than doing lots of mining invest the money from the mining to other sectors like education sector thanks for your time thank you so you can see above me there's the pylon lines very low and they get very close to a lot of the buildings around here and obviously that's dangerous to health the radiation that comes off the cables but then also obviously you're living in one of the most polluted cities UNICEF put had a statement that I
saw that was talking about how the fetuses of pregnant mothers are in great danger here and it can actually because of this high levels of pollution many times over the safe limit the fetuses can actually get severely impacted the children can often come out with behavioral and cognitive issues Arney is only 5 months old but he's already been hospitalized six times for so do you think that this is caused by the pollution according to the research of Unicef every year 400 children under age of five die due to the air pollution toxic air could lead to an epidemic of lung cancer it's unlivable really in terms of
health we just arrived at this black market area where apparently they sell basically anything you can imagine being told to be careful with the camera cuz people don't like it too much and uh there's also pick pockets around apparently so keep an eye out so we come to the stall here and they have little statues of Stalin Hitler and lenen so they're selling foxes here there's a black fox these baskets are for putting animal feces in and then you burn that to heat your houses sometimes yeah you just carry in your back and then you just pick it up and just put it like this right and that's a really economical way of heating your home right
yeah so we've met a man who's selling Furniture have you been coming to this market for many years 25 years she has been working 25 how has an Batar changed in the last 20 years L of construction going on construction so the city's growing a lot do you think the government's handling the economy and the standard of living of its citizens well they're failing 100% really what are they failing on before the Democracy it was all run by the government but now everything is private so they are there's no economical um policy all the private sectors are increasing prices wherever they want what would you like to see them do we have to have policy based on people's current living situations rather than just the policies and uh
regulations that are not very close to our um current living situation you feel like the government doesn't understand the struggles of Everyday People yes exactly that's what right okay thank you lady she's not from the city she's from some other Countryside area and she came to the city four or five years ago when her kids become a students there is much better opportunities here for your children than where you came from the only reason they came to the city is for the benefit for their kids uhhuh and um a big dog yeah and uh the main reason is for more opportunities for them for work and stuff but she is saying that their country side life is uncomparable right and I can feel that she loves the
countryside where it's open and she likes the lifestyle of hurting the livestock and everything it's kind of a sacrifice and yeah and what F what do you hope the future holds for your children inter stable job and houses maybe uh Apartments preferably and then eventually her and her husband would like to move back to the countryside how do you view the government in this country is it doing a good job the government is very poorly managing the country in the city there are lots of car accidents and because of the infrastructure the road outside of the city to Country sides they're not very safe so this lady here just asked us if there was uh if the dog is dangerous and then she picks up a rock and you were saying that there's dog attacks here
yeah very often cuz it's very frequent yeah it's very frequent and does the government do anything about that or not really so we just climbed up this small Mountain here there this huge Mosaic from the Soviets that they built in 1971 Soviets taking down Nazi Germany here pretty profound stuff I'm sure they didn't realize that Soviet Union was going to collapse just 20 years after this was built space exploration so we're actually on the other side of the river at the moment where we've been is way over on those Hills earlier in the video um up in those you know those informal houses
where we went into the um the G and uh this is actually the more upm Market uh area there's lots of construction going on here lots of new apartments there's beautiful restaurants and uh there's even tow houses being built over here but one thing about the city which is insane is the traffic sometimes it can take you hours to get very small distances and they're just building and building more people moving here more people moving here new houses and things and it's just not sustainable there's no Metro there's no efficient public transport so it's just kind of a disaster waiting to happen in terms of like the logistics of the city that's only also going to contribute to the pollution problem so doesn't seem like
there's much of a solution at play for that at the moment and that's coming from the locals saying that you know the government's not doing anything to kind of alleviate congestion on the roads or the pollution or you know build affordable housing for the poorer communities really wasn't expecting Anan batara to be this fascinating it's one of the most unique cities I've ever been to in the world it almost looks like you could be in you know Latin America Brazil you've got the FAS on the hillside and then down you've got the apartment blocks you know Rio de Janeiro or something
on our way driving to one of the power plants here and uh the traffic is absolutely insane the traffic here is something else there was going to be a 5 km drive to that other power plant it's going to take 2 to 3 hours the traffic's that bad here and then here we have the power plants I thought that they had banned coal in Anand Batar but apparently that they've just brought in a different kind of coal a more eco-friendly coal the city has ambitious plans to ban raw coal they want to force people to use cleaner processed coal but processed coal is expensive power plant in the background here and um there's a huge one here and then there's another massive one that we were going to go to down the road but
like it could be like a 4 to 6 hour round trip to drive 10 km it's it's unimaginable but yeah that's a obviously a big contributor to um making this one of the most polluted cities in the world you imagine here in winter when the you know the Smoke's low it's in a kind of a basin in a valley all the smoke the pollution from all this traffic these uh power plants traveling the world and meeting inspiring people and learning their stories gives a great insight into life on the ground in some of the more undiscovered countries so it can sometimes be a bit disappointing to see countries and people being misrepresented in the news mainstream media tends to give more attention to the Western World and only mentions countries like Mongolia during the
hardest times it faces that's one of the reasons I'm partnering with ground news on this video they are an app and a website that gather news sources from around the world to give readers an on the ground perspective on current events no matter where they're occurring recently I came across this story on preliminary election results showing mongolia's ruling party and the lead Grand news found more than 40 articles from across the world covering this mostly coming out of the US comparing coverage France 24 owned by their nation's government reported this election was dominated by corruption while mon funded by the government of Mongolia writes this election marks the beginning of a new Revival ushering in
the second wave of democracy and reform as you can see important contexts like who B of publication can heavily influence their framing of a story so being able to easily compare coverage on any story with this level of insight really helps me understand how perspective largely depends on where you're located and the type of news you see or don't see for that matter which is why I check the app for news before I travel to any new country ground news also shows you what way news outlets and articles tend to lean politically and even who funds each source which can be useful to gain a greater understanding of their perspective their goal of Bridging the Gap between countries and ideologies is important ground news is
independent and supported through subscriptions so their only agenda is to provide high quality content you can check them out at ground. news/ Indigo or scan this QR code to save 40% on the same Vantage plan I use for unlimited access to all their features I've been using this website frequently and it has been quite enlightening thank you to ground news for sponsoring this video so we're down in the main Square here and you can see all the financial district really quite modern but then you have these Soviet era buildings mixed in with it and then there's the uh Parliament with uh jingus Khan sitting in his seat there okay emper so amazing day exploring UL Batar what would you like to see change about the city the
government leaders like because they there are lots of corruption and everything so that needs if that could be changed I guess there'll be um much more happy living environment for everyone right so there's lots of corruption yeah but is there freedom of speech and things yes it's pretty uh free we could uh gather here at the main square and you know uh what is it called protest yeah protest and stuff yeah I guess you're talking about the corruption and that's the parliament behind us yeah so this is the parliament office so that's a pretty good sign I guess
the pollution like what can be done because if they're building so many more buildings and they're not putting in public transport and those big power plants are running and then in winter it's in this Basin with these Hills and everything gets trapped it doesn't seem like anything's being done accommodating more people in apartments so that they don't have to burn coal to uh generate heat and stuff and also when it comes to cars encourage more uh electric vehicles and maybe a Metro or something yeah the public transportation is not enough and it's not that convenient and not that comfortable for everyone thanks for showing me R your city I appreciate it you're welc thanks man so I hope you enjoyed that video on
mongolia's Capital City definitely blew me away unfortunately I actually got sick yet again on this trip and I had planned on making more videos in Mongolia but yet again the sick Gods decided to bestow on me another sickness but I'm already feeling a lot better and I'll be back soon with a new video a big thank you to everybody in Mongolia who helped me out with my trip thank you to the local people for helping showcase life in one of the most brutal living environments in the world it's great to be back releasing new content after a bit of a Hiatus there if you didn't see the update post I did on Instagram I took a break after the series I made in Jamaica at the end of that break I got
really ill for a couple months one of the worst illnesses I've had in my life but like I say it's great to be releasing content again and looking forward to Shar Shing more for the remainder of the Year thank you so much for watching and in case I don't see you good afternoon good evening and good night
