"Mongolia's skies," one of our travelers wrote, "make Montana's look like Manhattan's." It's a vast, seductive country whose reborn culture and unexpectedly excellent infrastructure make adventurous tourism--from the snows of the Altai to the Gobi Desert, from the forever rolling steppes to burgeoning Ulaanbaatar--a traveler's utopia.

• TOTAL AREA: 1,564,116 sq km

• POPULATION: 2,832,224

• RELIGIONS: Buddhist Lamaist 50%, none 40%, Shamanist and Christian 6%, Muslim 4%

• LANGUAGES: Khalkha Mongol 90%, Turkic, Russian

• GOVERNMENT TYPE: Mixed Parliamentary/Presidential

• CAPITAL CITY: Ulaanbaatar

• OFFICIAL CURRENCY: togrog/tugrik (MNT)

• TIME ZONE: GMT/UTC +8, GMT/UTC +7