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lhirlimann's Diary

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Comment from Adrian Shobrooke on 3 April 2026 at 18:43

Hi,

I was under the impression that gers were effectively temporary structures that are move around at least seasonally. Will such structures be in the same places this time next year? I can see some shadows of previous locations, so unless these are permanent structures for tourists etc, might be better to treat an area like a campsite?

While the wiki does mention mapping seasonal tent osm.wiki/Tag:building%3Dtent, I’m just wondering how mappers can keep this up to date?

Still, I’d love to do the on the ground verification. ;-)

Adrian

Comment from lhirlimann on 4 April 2026 at 09:31

How do Ger work in Mongolia:

  1. if the owner is a herder, the ger will move at least twice for summer and winter camp. The ger always comes back to the same place where other stuff have been left (like dung of wood). Most herder have 2 gers, one to live in one to stock things in.
  2. if settled like here the ger will be in an enclosure and will not move. It might be replaced by a wooden house after some time.
  3. Finally along the roads (mostly) you have “ger camps”, these are motel/hotel like amenities. They are easy to spot on aerial images because you have more than 3 gers and they align. These won’t move for a long time.

I’ve mapped based on aerial images and souvenirs. Things that were not present on the images, I did not add unless I had some GPS traces I took while there.

Hope this answers your question.

Comment from Adrian Shobrooke on 4 April 2026 at 12:51

Yes, thank you. That is a very useful response. It’s probably worth adding here osm.wiki/Tag:building%3Dger to help other mappers understand mappable contexts.

Comment from lhirlimann on 4 April 2026 at 12:57

Be my guess :p

For the record my wife is from Mongolia, hence the tribal knowledge.

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