One of our tour's intrepid Russian-built busses makes its way across the Gobi Desert in the south of Mongolia.

Before we came here, we'd always imagined the Gobi to be endless vistas of sand dunes. In fact, most of the Gobi doesn't have any sand dunes: just endless vistas of red dirt and scrubby little plants. There were some recent rains before we arrived, hence the patches of green you can see in the distance of the above photo.

In most of the country, Mongolia receives just enough rainfall to support livestock grazing, but not enough to support irrigated farming. The nomadic Mongolians learned this fact long ago, but that didn't stop Russian-inspired Communist central planners in the twentieth century from forcing people onto communal farms—with predictably disastrous results. Having shaken off Communism in 1990, the Mongolians are still trying to construct a viable modern economy. This is a hard trick if your primary resources still move around on four legs.

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