By Nikola Marinko · Supporting the WWTP Darhan team, Mongolia, while based in Georgia · Updated October 2026 · 6 min read

I went to Mongolia to help our team on a wastewater treatment plant for Darhan, the country's third most populous city, 230 km north of Ulaanbaatar. I was based in Georgia with Ludwig Pfeiffer at the time, the request came for the following week, and I said yes before I looked at the routing, which is how the Moscow story happened on the way there.

The page follows the trip itself. Landing at Chinggis Khaan International Airport, then an Ulaanbaatar of high-rise towers at the centre and ger districts at the edges, with cows grazing on open ground. Then the drive north on a two-lane road across open steppe with almost nothing built along it, easy to lose your way and not without risk, past gers where the old felt dwelling meets newer design. Darhan was founded in the 1960s as an industrial city with a Mongolian and Russian population, and we arrived while the Darhan Cultural Festival filled the central plaza, the place where the city gathers for its markets, performances and festivals.

It was a short assignment and it left the horizon burned into my memory. Mongolia keeps its nomadic ways and its city life side by side, and that is exactly what makes it worth the trip.

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Mongolia - The Steppe Road From Ulaanbaatar to Darhan

FIELD STORY