Mongolia Copper Mine at Oyu Tolgoi Tests Water Supply and Young Democracy

KHANBOGD, Mongolia – Though it is well before noon, the hot light of the South Gobi desert sun punches through the ventilation openings at the peak of Byambasuren’s white ger. The door of her teepee-like home, a single round room built of felt and canvas, is open to a dirt compound surrounded by a fence made of rough-cut wood. Beyond that, cattle and horses churn a small grid of unpaved streets to powder. Herders on foot follow behind, their features obscure in yellow clouds of dust.

Byambasuren’s ger lies 700 kilometers (434 miles) from Ulaanbataar, Mongolia’s capital. The trip overland is mostly on hard-packed dirt roads and takes 15 hours across treeless steppes and sand. Much of the world’s second largest desert remains remote from the world, even forbidding. That is not the case for Byambasuren, a young herder and mother, or for Khanbogd, an expanding livestock and desert town in Omnogovi, Mongolia’s largest province, which lies along the border with China.

Read the full article here.