What are the advantages and disadvantages of living in a Mongolian Yurt?

I think I can answer this. I’ve lived in Mongolian ‘gers’ (the Mongolian name for yurts) longer than most Mongolians and I’m British.

My Mongolian wife and I (plus our pets) live year round in gers. We have four gers, two traditional and two modern.

For the advantages.

The traditional ger is efficient to heat. The low volume and arrangement of beds around the perimeter of the ger with a stove in the middle is efficient to heat. There’s no wasted space and the roof is low. Therefore low volume. A stove can heat up a freezing ger in a few minutes using almost any burnable fuel (wood, coal, dung, etc).

This is one of our traditional gers outside. The horses that graze on our mountain are not ours but we let them graze because it’s the neighbourly thing to do.

This is the interior of one of our traditional gers. Guests use this one.

We have another with beds for 4 people. Also used for visitors: family, friends and sometimes paying guests.

Transportable. A ger is very mobile. It can be taken down in less than an hour and put on a small truck or cart and moved to a new location. This was important for nomads who move their herds to different grazing areas a few times a year. It takes longer to put up again but not too long. Depending on the number of people available. Usually it’s a family task. So let’s say 2–3 hours. You don’t take it down often, like backpackers, so the time to assemble/disassemble is pretty good.

Here is a ger in and on a Toyota Prius in the capital, Ulaanbaatar (photo from google search):

Low-cost. It’s very affordable and uses mostly local materials. A basic traditional ger (5 wall ger) probably costs $2000 without furniture. It’s environmentally friendly using renewable materials: wood, wool and cotton. Most of these are from Mongolia but more likely uses imported fabric these days, like nylon from China.

Longevity. Gers last a long time. Only the canvas needs to be changed every few years due to UV exposure. Our gers are several generations old. The wood is protected from the elements and will last a few lifetimes. Modern houses don’t last this long. Maintenance is cheap with just the canvas needing replacement.

Windproof. Gers are very windproof which is good for the exposed steppes. The round structure allows the wind to flow around without too much resistance. A few rocks are all that’s needed attached to straps to hold them down in the case of high winds. Rain will make a ger wet but it dries out and breathes without trapping moisture to cause mold. The felt acts as a big air filter, preventing particulates from entering.

Now the disadvantages.

Claustrophobic. Traditionally there are no windows and the door is small. I found this to be an issue for me. So I bought two more gers, this time modern designs with several windows and large glass doors. We now live in these 2 connected gers and they feel much more open and bright.

These are our 2 modern gers being built and almost done. We built a modern bathroom in the middle with a hallway so we could walk between them without going outside.

This is the interior of our kitchen / living room ger. Visiting family and friends sleep here too on sofa beds. Sometimes paying guests pay extra for this ger.

These modern versions of the Mongolian ger are popular at tourist camps and for summer/weekend homes but we live here all year round. The bathroom / hallway has a wood frame (barn style) and steel insulated panels for walls and roof.

Even traditional gers can often have extensions for entries or bathrooms but ours uses modern materials and has all the modern conveniences: hot water, full-size bath with shower, flushing toilet with Japanese bidet seat and an automatic washing machine.

If somebody is using the bathroom we always have the outside toilet or just outside for backup.

As I said, this allows us to stay inside on winter nights – the weather can be brutal. Such as in the photo below during a blizzard.

Cramped. There’s not much space for storage. Sometimes families will have a whole ger just for storage if they can afford it. We went another direction and have two shipping containers for storage. They are located behind the modern gers and provide storage and some protection from the prevailing north winds.

In this photo a flat-bed truck with a crane is delivering our 2nd container (20 tons) at night on the side of a mountain. It was quite an achievement of the delivery driver/operator but the 2 containers have been very useful for weatherproof storage. One container is now my office / workshop with insulation and heating.

Little headroom. A ger’s low ceilings and doors are tough on tall people. Not so much an issue for average Mongolians but it was for me. I’m 187cm so I chose modern gers for our main living quarters because they are much taller. In our traditional gers, I had to stoop down near the walls and almost double up to get through the door. The modern ones solve that for me.

Poor fire resistance. Gers are not at all fire resistant. So that can be an issue. Lots of gers have burned down and killed entire families. We have a fire extinguisher but if a fire gets going fiercely I probably wouldn’t be able to save the ger. At least it’s cheap to replace but we’d still be devastated. We space them apart on our land so a fire hopefully wouldn’t spread.

The whole camp looks like this in winter. The gers are mainly spread apart for privacy and fire hazards: