Mongolia, a country in Asia bordered by China and Russia, has about 1.5 times the land area of California.
But only 2.9 million people live there in 2010, about the same number who live in the St. Louis, Missouri, metropolitan area.
About 30% of the population in Mongolia are nomadic or semi-nomadic, and the most popular religion is Tibetan Buddhism.
Only 1 percent of the land in Mongolia is suitable for farming because most of it is covered by steppes, with mountains to the north and west and the Gobi Desert to the south.
Mongolia is the most sparsely populated independent country in the world, and is the world’s second largest landlocked country after Kazakhstan.
