Mongolia is the world's most sparsely populated sovereign state. Located in East Asia, it is landlocked between Russia to the north and China to the south. Its capital, Ulaanbaatar, is the coldest national capital in the world, with an annual average temperature below freezing. The geography is characterized by the Gobi Desert in the south and cold, mountainous regions in the north and west. Mongolia is known as the 'Land of the Eternal Blue Sky' because it has over 250 sunny days a year. The central part of the country consists of the Mongol-Manchurian grassland, a vast temperate steppe that has supported nomadic pastoralism for millennia. The country has no access to the sea, making it the second-largest landlocked country in the world.