Word: ulan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...opening a diplomatic post in Mongolia, the landlocked republic where 50,000 Soviet troops are stationed to guard the border with China. But the yet to be named U.S. ambassador will see that mountainous country only periodically. He will be posted in Washington, not in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator. It will mark the first time that a U.S. envoy has fulfilled his mission from a desk on C Street...
Faced with a shrinking budget, the State Department could not justify the expense of opening an embassy in Ulan Bator. Neither could scores of other nations: 100 have diplomatic relations with Mongolia, but only 17 ambassadors are posted there. The U.S. will staff its embassy with a charge d'affaires and an assistant, who will work in an apartment leased from the Mongolian Foreign Ministry...
...days, 7865 kilometers, Peking to Moscow via Ulan Balor, Irkutsk, Novisibirsk and Omsk. Taking the Trans-Siberian railroad shouldn't be this easy. Just allow two weeks in Pecking: After making a reservation at the China International Travel Service (CITS), report to the Russian Embassy to apply for a free transit visa. A week later, pick it up and present it to the Mongolian Embassy, which in a single day will grant you a transit visa for $2, payable only in U.S. dollars. (As a penalty for not recognizing the People's Republic of Mongolia, Americans pay double) Then return...
...Mongolia. Russian tanks, trucks; soldiers. Horsemen and gingerbread houses. Stand at window on, "yurt alert" (looking out for Mongolian round tents--yurts). Ulan Bator: Woman in traditional dress sees off granddaughter in cords with tape deck. Sunset across the grasslands...
Once the French tour group disembarks at Ulan Bator, we are fewer than 35, most of us transit passengers with too little money and foresight to book an Intourist guide and hotel room in Moscow. To be ignored in the USSR is a privilege, but an unsettling one. Outside the window, peasants with produce, families with hampers, and soldiers with duffles reinforce this sense of travelers' limbo. We are insubstantial, unaffiliated. The Russians, much to our disappointment, do not stamp our passports. When we finally leave the country, they collect our visa form and leave us no trace...