Marmots roam the slums of Ulaanbaatar.

This statue of Sukhbaatar beats in the heart of town. 'Hero of the revolution', it is he whom declared Mongolia's independence from the Chinese in 1921. A vast concrete concourse envelopes the statue, Goverment house abutting it, providing an opportune location in which to stage unruly protests, as demonstrated by the thousands of students that amassed there four days ago in opposition of steadily raising post-secondary tuition fees. Windows were broken, bodies clashed, but our infallible hero, Sukhbaatar, remains as intact as ever.

Urban Mongolia is not a spectacularly aesthetic place, least not in any conventional sense. Concrete and haze and dirt abounds. But during the wintertime, when the sun hangs at half-mast all day, startling shadow patterns come to dance across every ground and wall. It's then that one becomes stuck in a dream, a Tim Burton film, walking at half-pace so as not to miss any of the unpindownable prettiness of it all.

I do not know who this is. He looks like an archer. Most of the less-modern Mongolian men look like archers. However, I do know where this is: one slight neck tilt above my favourite Ulaanbaataran computer, which operates sufficiently with an entire two windows opened at once!

But not three.

A messy glimpse of the Mongolia Cyrillic. In this case, cutely, on a monastery wall.