Mongolia time zones

[Jesper Nørgaard]

I haven't seen any references to the new Mongolia daylight saving, are there
any on the web? It seems that there are also no references in your mail. Since
so many sources differ about Mongolia, I would advice a careful approach
to these changes, to avoid having to do them over and over again (well,
I admit that this how we always manage time zone changes from Israel,
but here there is no indication that the Mongol government is changing it's
mind all the time, as they do in Tel Aviv).

Actually I checked out mongolian time zones just a few weeks ago, but
could not find other sources than 
<http://www.mongoliatourism.gov.mn/general.htm> which I believe we received
from Oscar van Vlijmen in Holland. It is true that it doesn't work anymore, but that 
is simply because the page general.htm is not available anymore. If you use
http://www.mongoliatourism.gov.mn/toc.htm , you will get into a general
page, which further down has a paragraph "Time Differences" 
It seems that these pages were recently changed concerning visa rules, but 
I don't know if the timezone
information is up-to-date. They report two time zones, the eastern consisting
of provinces Khovd, Bayan Ulgii and Uvs, on GMT+7, and the rest on GMT+8.
They specifically claim that Mongolia no longer "puts forward its clocks by
1 hour in the summer months".

I would doubt a lot that the Choibalsan zone on GMT+9 has existed since
1983 as Shanks claims, but we lack authoritative information, since all the
authorities seem to disagree. However, the above page I still consider as the
only authoritative web page I have seen yet, e.g. published by the mongolian
government.

I found a map of Mongolia from these pages which showed each province
with borders to the other provinces, also population counters, however I did
not write the URLs down, and I couldn't find them again today. I am
pretty sure that the provinces Govi-Altai and Zavkhan were to the east of
the Khovd, Bayan Ulgii and Uvs provinces on these maps (not to the west).

> (Maybe they redrew the provincial lines lately?  It's such a
> pain to deal with a nation that is still nearly half nomadic.  :-)

I can only agree more! We will have to wait for the nomadic computers ... :-)
E.g. those that are powered by Sun light or maybe saddle pressure power :-)

Regards,
----------
From: 	Paul Eggert[SMTP:eggert at twinsun.com]
Sent: 	Domingo 13 de Mayo de 2001 0:52
To: 	rmcdow at enteles.com
Cc: 	tz at elsie.nci.nih.gov
Subject: 	Re: Mongolia time zones

> Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 10:59:24 -0800
> From: Rives McDow <rmcdow at enteles.com>

>     In addition to Mongolia starting daylight savings as reported earlier
> (adopted dst on April 27, 2001,0200 local time, ending Sept. 28, 2001),

Thanks.  Sorry, I missed that somehow.  Is this a one-time deal, or
are they permanently instituting DST, presumably using a
last-Friday-of-April-and-September rule?

> there are three time zones.

I guess it's time to add a new Asia/Choibalsan Zone.  Shanks wrote
that they diverged from Ulaanbaatar time in April 1983, so I'll assume
that.  Also, your "0200 local time" agrees with Shanks from mid-1984
on, but disagrees with the IATA; I'll assume that the IATA has been
wrong (which wouldn't be the first time).

>  Provinces 19 hours from the IDL:
> Bayan-ulgii, Uvs, Khovd, Zavkhan, Govi-Altai

<http://www.mongoliatourism.gov.mn/general.htm> (now inaccessible,
alas) reported in 1999-09 that only Bayan-ulgii, Uvs, and Khovd were
in that time zone.  Did the other two provinces switch zones?  They
are further west than Khovd, so for now, I'll assume that the earlier
reference missed those two provinces.  (That reference claimed that
there was no third time zone in the east, which disagreed with Shanks
and other sources, so it was on my "questionable" list anyway.)

> Provinces 20 hours from the IDL:
> Khovsgol, Bulgan, Arkhangai, Khentii, Tov, Bayankhongor, Ovorkhangai,
> Dundgovi, Dornogovi, Omnogovi,
> 
> Provinces 21 hours from the IDL:
> Choibalsan, Sukhbaatar

Just as a point of trivia, <http://www.world-gazetteer.com/c/c_mn.htm>
says that Choibalsan is in the province of Dornod.  Your list also
omits the province of Selenge, which is listed in that source and at
the CIA.  (Maybe they redrew the provincial lines lately?  It's such a
pain to deal with a nation that is still nearly half nomadic.  :-)