The first time I traveled to Mongolia I didn’t have anything special in mind. I knew about the Great Mongol Empire and Genghis Khan, I knew that they were nomads and that they lived in small tents called gers. I thought it was a third-world country, backward, dotted with the Soviet Union and the influence of China… but nothing prepared me for getting to know what is now (and has been ever since) my destination of choice, to which I always long to return.
Of the many times I’ve been back to Mongolia, here are the ones that still impress me. Suggestions that serve as an invitation to visit the country, or at least to get to know the book and movie suggestions that I leave at the end of the text.
I think everyone should visit a destination like Mongolia at least once in their lives. The fact that we are completely removed from our comfort zone, in many ways: from accommodation to food, from transport to clothing, including religions and beliefs. It’s a return to human roots: our place in the world; disconnecting from materialism and the feeling of possession; the rules of survival.
The biggest sky in the world
Without a doubt, the reason I’m endlessly in love with Mongolia is the “biggest sky in the world”. The steppes stretch out of sight, lengthening the horizon, and the fact that Mongolia has such a low population density and very few cities separated by several tens of kilometers, the stars shine brighter and the sky is wider. Mongolian nights are one of the most beautiful spectacles nature has to offer. The Milky Way stretches across the sky, finally making us realize how small we are in the Universe. And the shooting stars, of which there are so many in Mongolia, are no longer wishful thinking: here, each shooting star represents a soul that has just left the life of the body on earth and is traveling to heaven.
Extreme temperature ranges
The biggest sky in the world brings us incredible views and extreme temperature ranges: from day to night they can vary by up to 30ºC! Winters are extreme, and UlaanBaatar is the coldest capital city in the world, reaching temperatures of -50ºC. Summer, on the other hand, is scorching and reaches 40ºC. If in winter the roads disappear completely as they are covered in snow, in summer the heavy rains also change the landscape. The waterfalls freeze over in winter, as does the largest lake in Mongolia and the second largest in Asia, Khovsgol. I think the extreme temperatures make this place seem like another planet, the night different from the day, one month different from the next, a constant mutation that always awakens our instinct for exploration and quasi-survival.
Breaking down raw materials
There is no agriculture in Mongolia. For centuries, the Mongolian population has learned to make do with what the region gives them most: animals. And it’s incredible to see how many products, textures and flavors they can achieve with just one raw material. Despite being a complicated destination / culture for vegans and vegetarians, what is certain is that the spirit of survival of these people who inhabit these completely hostile lands is admirable, as is the way they manage to extract so many products from what little they have. When it comes to flavors, they make eight different types of cheese from the same milk, for example. Sweet and savory, crunchy or buttery.
The Silk Road
Although it was once the largest empire in the world, it was “sunshine for a short time”. After the fall of the Mongol empire, the Silk Road culture and the corridor for commercial transactions between East and West remained. The Mongol Empire was built largely from key Mongol cities that served as “tollbooths” to tax the products traded on this route. After the fall of the empire, other cultures and civilizations arose along the route, and sometimes sprouted from these trade tolls. The original Silk Road underwent major changes after Vasco da Gama opened the way to the east by sea, but the overland route remained in every traveler’s imagination forever.
Transmongolian
After centuries of oblivion, the Soviet Union brought the Trans-Mongolian route to Mongolia in 1947. Years later, in the 1950s, the route was completed with access to China. The Transmongolian has thus become the most popular rail route in the world, with 7,356 kilometers (current distance) of track, linking Moscow to Beijing, crossing three countries, seven nights in a row. More than cargo, the importance of this line was reflected in the travelers and explorers who entered Mongolia, pulled by a diesel locomotive, and then explored the steppes in the popular Russian UAZ vans, or on horseback, in the style of Genghis Khan himself. I can’t hide the fact that this is still my favorite trip, and Mongolia makes it even greater.
Mongolia in Popular Culture
Although it is still an unknown destination, Mongolia has been widely explored in literature and cinema. In 2005 he made it to the Oscars with what is to date the most popular Mongolian production, “The Cave of The Yellow Dog”. In 2007, the story of Genghis Khan, told in the movie “Mongol”, also reached Hollywood. More recently, the Netflix series “Marco Polo” showed the world Kublai Khan’s Mongolia. The 2016 documentary “The Eagle Huntress” also made people fall in love with the story of a different ethnicity, which was thought to be just part of a literary imaginary and not a real story.
In literature, apart from the obvious “The Travels of Marco Polo“, “The Lost Country“, more recently published as “Mongolia: Travels in the Untamed Land” by Jasper Becker is probably my favorite book about Mongolia – a spectacular historical and cultural context told in the form of travel tales. “The Blue Sky” by Galsan Tschinag is also quite interesting, as it recounts the impact of civilization on ethnic Mongolian tribes (in this case in the Tuva area, known for its white reindeer tribes).
