This week’s dream: The awe-inspiring emptiness of Mongolia
“I love Mongolia,” said Stanley Stewart in Condé Nast Traveler. Decades ago, I crossed the sparsely populated East
Asian nation on horseback, traveling
1,000 miles. The five-month journey proved revitalizing; “it stripped away all the measures of self, all the nagging preoccupations.” And Mongolia remains the world’s “last truly nomadic realm.” A quarter of its population lives on the vast steppe and migrates seasonally. Recently, during a brief return visit to the country, I sat down with a shaman, drank bowls of fermented mare’s milk, and spent four days in a remote, grassy valley in a luxury version of the nomads’ round white yurts, or gers. I even shared one meal with a Kazakh eagle hunter and his family in a cozy ger that smelled of horses, butter, and mutton. “After dinner, the Chinggis Khan vodka came out, followed by a twostringed Mongolian lute.”
Over the past decade, Mongolia has been attracting “a different kind of nomad”—
Millennials who crave wide-open spaces and a sense of freedom, said Lauren
Jackson in The New York Times. My cousin and I found both when we rented a four-by-four and drove cross-country. As we left Ulaanbaatar, the capital city,
“the sky stretched so wide the horizon seemed to curve.” Tour operators can help adventure seekers attend the annual Golden Eagle Festival or ride in the Mongol Derby, a 600-mile horse race. We instead picnicked next to winding rivers, camped beneath the
Milky Way, and watched wild horses in Hustai National Park. We also stayed with a horse herder we’d found on Facebook, and he led us on a ride around Khuvsgul Lake—“an idyllic finale to our journey.”
“I was lucky enough to find Monastery Stay,” a tour company that helps foreigners learn about Mongolian Buddhism, said Breanna Wilson in Forbes. My train from Ulaanbaatar to the town of Sainshand “was itself an adventure.” After a breakfast of milk tea and dumplings, I visited Khamariin monastery, where chanting monks welcomed the Lunar New Year. Later that day, I visited Shambala, a place of pilgrimage in the Gobi Desert. Though I can’t say for sure that I experienced the location’s storied spiritual energy, “there was something in the crisp, cold winter air.” Nine-night tours of Mongolia with luxurytravel specialist Black Tomato (black tomato.com) start at $8,190 a person.