The Long Way Down, Up and Around: Mongolia, moving West

Wow, rural Mongolia. The real frontier of civilization. Driving through town after town on the way to the White Lake it felt like we were moving through time, back to a world where people's triumph over the wilderness was temporary and tentative. These towns were full of wooden clapboard houses, with stoves burning dried wood or dung, electrical lines loosely strung around the town, dirt streets, and virgin steppe all around. It wasn't a shantytown - that's too strong of a word and it didn't feel poverty stricken - it just felt raw, like something out of Little House on the Prarie.

Moving west the weather got colder and colder, and the sky turned an ominous gray. We drove through steppe, through forests, and over a few ridges. Our final destination was Tstserleg, one of the biggest towns in central Mongolia, although it's not much more than a collection of mud streets, frontier houses, and one youth hostel.

The travelers you meet in Mongolia are a little different from the ones I met in South America. Mongolia is simply so hard to get to, and so hard to get around, that the usual backpacker crowd of college kids and Europeans on their gap years never make it. The people that do are the determined ones, the ones who have made a conscious effort to see Mongolia. There's also a good number of people who are on the Trans Siberian and decide to take a week off to get a good look at Siberia. The vibe is older, more determined, and more lone wolf travelers. You have to like solitude to go to Mongolia, or most of your friends probably won't fork out to make the trip with you, so either way, people landed here solo and ready to explore the country.

That Dutch guy from my first night at the homestay fit the bill perfectly - he used to be an engineer at a big European multi-national, but after a few years of the cubicle grind he was "lucky" enough to be made redundant with a big severance package. World travels were next, as he thought about what he wanted to do next. Randomly, I would also meet a Swiss private banker, whose parents were from Taiwan and who had a thirst for adventure that his banking job didn't satisfy. He traded credit derivatives. Who knew.

On the way to the White Lake our group picked up two more travelers - we would spend the next few days together. One had fallen in love with Mongolia on a trip a few years ago, met some of her best friends there, and was back to see a bit more. Our other companion was a grad student, also with a mixed cultural background - part of her family was from Vietnam, part was Swiss, she grew up in Switzerland and was studying in Korea. Maybe Mongolia has some weird attraction for people, including myself, who have various degrees of identity confusion.

Once again, we were saved by expats who had set up a guesthouse for foreigners in Tsetserleg. A couple of Australians had been in Mongolia on mining work, had married Mongolian women, and then eventually quit their jobs to move back and open a guesthouse with all the amenities international backpackers could want. They had the best breakfast in town, and wonderful hot showers!

The last leg of our journey would be a ride in a Russian jeep the last 6 hours or so to the White Lake. The road started off great, and then deteriorate, climaxing in a river crossing (which went very smoothly). I had the chance to swap books at the guesthouse, so now I was happily reloaded for a few more days. Thinking back, it was amazing how much free time I had. There were whole days when I had nothing to do except look out the window, hang out, and read. Welcome to life in Mongolia.