Today the city’s population is over 1.3 million and makes up about 45 percent of Mongolia’s total population. Surprisingly, Mongolia is still one third fully nomadic and, as such, around 800,000 people live in “ger” (yurt) districts on the edge of town. Mongolia has four seasons. Summer is a very special time in Ulaanbaatar; we enjoy warm weather after long winter and s...

          Bactrian camels were commonly used on the Silk Road to carry goods. Because they could be used in nearly all terrains – from high mountains and cold, open plains to  inhospitable deserts – they were  indispensable to many traders and remain a big part of Silk Road lore. Bactrian camels are camels with two humps and two coats of hair...

Ibn Battuta: The legendary medieval Muslim adventurer Ibn Battuta (1304–1368) was a Muslim Moroccan explorer. During his life, He traveled extensively across North Africa and Asia, eventually reaching Mongol-ruled China, the furthest place from his homeland known at the time. After coming back home after 24 years, he left once again to visit Andalusia to the north, and Mali and Niger ...

Marco Polo: The First European traveled to the Orient Marco Polo (1254-1324) was a Venetian merchant explorer. From 1271 to 1295, he traveled through Asia along the Silk Road, including China, Persia, India, and Japan. He wrote several travelogues describing orient cultures and inner workings, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China in the Yuan Dynasty. His boo...

Zheng He: The Great Chinese Navigator Connecting the Silk Road Zheng He (1371-1433) was a Chinese traveler during China’s early Ming dynasty. Zheng explored Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Western Asia, and East Africa from 1405 to 1433. Sailing to the Indian Ocean seven times, Zheng promoted the Maritime Silk Road as well as the land Silk Road. Zheng’s expedition w...

Yomiuri newspaper reported that a hospital and a vaccination center in Japan had to drop about 2,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 due to a storage temperature problem. Meanwhile, 12 doses of the vaccine in a Ward in Tokyo were also dropped because of dilution. It is unclear what caused more than 5,000 remaining doses of the vaccine to be dropped. Omuta Hospital in Fukuoka Pr...

  The Silk Roads has become attractive because of the nostalgia of ancient time, of another way of interacting, exchanging and sharing. In today’s world marked by an alarming increase of intolerance, mistrust and extremism favoured by the global crisis and the acceleration of communication, here is a real aspiration for a more human interactions between people. However, these ...

The Church of Santa Maria della Salute acts as an important landmark in the urban space of Venice. The history of the baroque style building is a reminder of the epidemics that repeatedly struck the city. In comparison to other cities, Venice was well prepared with regards to plagues. By 1423, the Senate of the Venetian Republic established a hospital, the first in the world – for the tr...

Moscow State Linguistic University   The international scientific and practical conference “Authentic Dialogue of Russia and Francophone World in the Sphere of Culture, Language and Literature” took place at MSLU on April 22-24 for the fourth time and was held in a mixed format (offline and in Google meet). More than 100 people took part in the conference, among them rep...