Mongolia without a yurt

The world-class Hotel Blue Sky is the latest skyscraper situated on Peace Avenue, opposite the city's central Sukhbaatar Square. Photos By Todd Balazovic / China Daily

Visitors feed pigeons flying around Gandan Buddhist monastery.

The famous steppes of Mongolia, flying into Chinggis Khaan International Airport.

The planet's most sparsely populated country is a land of contrasts, reports Lee Hannon, offering untold mineral wealth, smart new hotels and warm hospitality, but lacking the elegance of some other Asian countries.

An almighty thud reverberated down my spine as I turned to see the man crash to the floor of the bus. It's 11 am in Mongolia and I have just been head-butted by a local so drunk that when he staggered to take his seat, he missed - and accidentally propelled himself onto me. Nobody on the packed bus batted an eyelid. It was as if the overwhelming stench of alcohol had created a force field around him so strong that nobody dared go near.

Eyes wild, face wind-chapped and booze-bloated, he looked equally dazed and confused as he gripped the dirty floor like a child who had lost his step on a bouncy castle.

It was not the lack of compassion from his fellow passengers that troubled the weatherworn fellow, but the location of his bottle of rocket fuel that had fallen away in the melee.

He slurred a rambunctious sentence I couldn't find in my phrase book and even if it existed, I wasn't about to ask him to repeat it. For the next 40 minutes of my bus ride I could feel his breath as if it was burning the skin on my neck, and as we continued along the route picking up more passengers, it was clear he was not alone.

Ulan Bator is like the last Wild West frontier sandwiched between China and Russia, where even in the midst of summer it gets cold at night. For those brave enough to travel in winter, expect temperatures that dip to -40 C.