The Wild, Wild West

ULAANBASHI, Mongolia – Hollywood scared the shit out of the Soviet censors. Very, very few films were allowed to pass the Iron Curtain, and nothing in John Wayne's canon was on that list. The quintessentially American westerns – "High Noon" and "The Quick and The Dead" – never screened in Warsaw or Moscow. Instead the proletariat a revisionist take on the genre: the Red Western.

As with their American brethren, the Red Westerns are a diffuse group, but in general these movies subverted and questioned the Western's moral compass. Many times the Native Americans are shown to be heroes, and the maundering cowboy an enemy. Instead of making off with a pile of money, the Red Western hero distributes it amongst the people.

With these plotlines, the Soviet Film Agency couldn't just call up the National Park Service and request a three-week shoot in Monument Valley. The Red Westerns had to use stand-ins for the scenery of the American West, and by far the most popular alternative was here in Mongolia.

After a long drive back to Ulaanbaatar today, I realize that the directors needed to alter very little to make the shooting location seem American. Our route from Kharkorum is more southerly than the one we took out, which means we are much closer to the Gobi Desert. Soon after leaving, the terrain goes from light brown to a deep rust. Rolling hills are replaced with strange rock formations dropped randomly in the plains. The steppe winds have blown oblong curves into the rock. This could be Colorado or Arizona.

Bobby is apparently not desperate to get back to Ulaanbaatar. Three hours into our trip, six rotations into Battir's new tape – a collection of Buddhist mantras acquired at the Kharkorum Gift Shop – she asks if we are up for one last tourist attraction. "Do you want to see dunes?" she says, and half-hour later the van is parked on the top of a small hill of sand.

Although they lobbied for the stop, Myriam, Cing and Bobby decide the biting wind is too much and just take a few steps out of the van. Caleb and I plunge into the wilderness. Here there are no trees and no grasses, just sand and a few scattered pieces of scrub brush. I run toward a high dune, a couple hundred meters from the van, scamper to the summit and then jump off the sharpest face.

Thud! I land not in a cushion of buoyant sand but on a patch of crusty sand hard as cement. My knees scream in pain. I have been the victim of a mirage. The toffee dunes and blinding sunlight so much resembled the Southwest for a brief moment, I deluded myself into believe I was in a real desert. I hobble back to the car, cursing not to make the same mistake again.

Perhaps it is lingering skepticism from the fall or the combined effect of four nights of questionable sleep and hard drinking, but I am slow to realize the other Western parallels as we pull off the road for lunch. We stop in the first settlement since our ger the previous night, five bumpy hours from Kharkorum.

Our destination is a canteen smack dab in the middle of a one-street town. Inside a young waitress, bland expression practically bursting with ennui, moves her hand to indicate open seating. We choose the only table big enough to accommodate a party of six. The menu sticks to familiar favorites: noodles with mutton, mutton soup, fried mutton rice and buuz, which are mutton-filled dumplings. On the walls is a collection of crap that looks pulled out of someone's storage closet: yellowed surveryor's maps, a brochure for a ger camp, a couple family photos and a wool hat. This is an old time saloon, a watering hole for grizzled locals (two old herders sit at the table opposite ours, sipping milk tea) and travelers passing through.

Hunger abated, I am able to examine the rest of the town with a clear mind. The dozen or so structures in this town are all on the same side of the street, built so they connect in one long row. They are each the same heigh, with matching shutters and all made out of wood. Each building is seperated by a different bright paint color, either a coral blue, fiery orange or magenta. This place is a couple tumbleweeds and a hero short of being a Sergio Leone film set.

Too soon I am in the backseat of the van, speeding back towards civilization. Mongolia is true the Wild West. Here there is no need to remember a time when the place wasn't "tame." We still cut our own path, choosing where to explore in a virgin land. Authority is far away; no one is coming to rescue the idiotic adventurer. It is a place where people still live as they please, mostly unfettered by the pressures of the information age. I will miss it.

A Hollow Shrine

KHARKORHIN, Mongolia – A stumpa is the oldest and arguably the most reverential symbol of Buddhism. Long before statues of the effeminate, elbow-less prophet dotted Asia's temples, devout followers of the Buddha built stumpas, cylindrical shrines that come to a point like a Hershey's Kiss. They are painted ochre and gold, the colors of a bright sky. The stumpa is an expression of enlightenment at the end of the FIVE FOLD PATH – Buddha's gift to the world.

To show religious piety, rulers in nearly every town and hamlet erected a stumpa long ago. Larger, wealthier places sometimes have a couple stumpas, or even a row for pilgrims to prostrate around. But only here in Mongolia is there an entire wall made of stumpas. This is Kharkorum, the palace of The Great Khans.

Although he's heavily featured in tourist literature, the most famous Khan, Genghis, never lived here. That Khan didn't need no stinking palace to show he was boss.

Born to a broken family on Siberian plains, Khan built an land empire unmatched until the Soviet Union nearly a millennium later. When he died, his iron-clad rule stretched from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. A flick of the Khan's wrist could mean annihilation for hundreds of thousands of people in a disloyal township.

Khan relied on his cunning wit, masterful tactics and fearsome army to rule most of the known world. His power sprung from his mind, not his office. He did without much of the monarchical pomp and circumstance that fascinated other rulers. No entourage of young boys throwing flowers ahead of his horse, no harem of young virgins. This man lived in a tent.

But later Khans did not share Genghis' frugality. Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis, forced the court to set up a permanent camp here in Kharkorum. He assembled a dream team of designers, architects and masons: an Italian engineer, Persian craftsman and Russian serfs came to the steppe. They built an opulent capital here. Or rather, they supposedly built an opulent capital, because most of what modern historians know about the place comes from "The Secret History of the Mongols," and other contemporary accounts, since very little remains of the place.

The ruins of Kharkorum are close enough to the dingy, modern town of Kharkorhin to approach as Kublai would, on horseback, but my party rumbles up to the main entrance in Battir's battered van. As I've mentioned, the dramatic wall that surrounds the palace raises expectations in its majesty. The rows and rows of stumpas rise towards the heavens like giant sentries on permanent guard.

After paying the modest entrance fee, my three companions and I walk inside. We cross the threshold to discover nothing. The fountain of mercury, the magnificent gardens and all the other wonders are gone. Instead, there are dead tufts of short grass and a few scattered patches of ice, in other words the inside of the gate is barely discernible from the outside.

Closer inspection reveals two structures on the property. One is a Chinese temple, with glazed-jade roof tiles and two dragons guarded the entrance. The door is bolted shut with a rusted padlock, with a "Do Not Enter" sign in English, Mongolian and Russian.

In the northwest corner we find a small Mongolian temple. Inside a young, bald monk offers to sell us a Genghis Khan figurine or a postcard of the steppe. I decline, and go to the outside of the temple, where there are a few prayers to turn. We soon are killing time: Cing takes a few pictures. Caleb smokes a cigarette. Myriam waves to small dog. In all, we spend half an hour in Mongolia's greatest palace, and that seems like 20 minutes too long.

As we head toward the van, I'm left to ponder the legacy of Genghis Khan. It makes sense the Mongolians' greatest ruler would be a nomad. People here are born in a land without natural barriers. They are raised in an wide, open expanse. Every few weeks all families take town their home, and look for someplace better. Genghis Khan took this quest for self-betterment to its natural conclusion – empire.

It also makes sense that those who tried and alter the landscape, to built and settle in one place, failed. The Mongol empire crumbled as quickly as it was constructed, and soon the country slipped into 500 years of foreign domination. The Khan's palace is lost to time, reclaimed by the endless steppe. I wonder if someday the steppe will reclaim the tatty town nearby. Even if it does, I doubt that Genghis Khan, and his tent will be forgotten.

Behind the Door

KHARKHORIN, Mongolia – Traveling, to some extent, is about limits, journeying to the edges of the Earth and seeing if it is possible to cross thresholds hidden in our home communities. On this trip I have done many things that I previously thought too complicated, foreign or illegal to consider. But here I found the place where even I will not venture, my line in the sand: a fern green door covered with deep scratches in its thick hardwood.

The door lies in a part of Mongolia I am sure my hosts would rather I not see. I found it by wandering off, going on another "walk" that confuses the Mongolians so much. After my companions and I arrive at the ger camp in the mid-afternoon, we are not interested in sitting around the cast-iron stove and drinking salty milk tea. Instead, Caleb, Myriam and I excuse ourselves after just one cup (rather than the customary five or six) and set off for the town. Bobby, increasingly in-tune with our need to meander, looks at her watch and declares that we can go, as long as we are back in precisely two hours. It might be a strange request coming from someone who on this trip has shown a lax regard for puncuality, but we promise to return in time for more milk tea and steamed mutton dumplings.

Our accommodation is an enclosed ger in the middle of a string of fenced lots running on an east-west axis. The ger entrances face south, toward the town of Kharkhorin. For a front yard, the half-dozen or so families that live here have a kilometer-wide zone of boggy meadow between them and the town. There is no established road leading toward town, so the three of us walk the shortest course available: a straight line.

As we walk, looming to our east is a decaying flour factory, a reminant of the country's attempted industrialization. In the post-war period, when Stalin and Krushchev's Five Year Plans pushed the Soviet Union to recover through massive expansion of heavy industry, the regime's puppet rulers here in Mongolia tried to do the same thing on the steppe. They encouraged nomadic Mongolians to cluster in agricultural communes and newly constructed communities and export commodities to other Soviet republics and allies. For fairly obvious reasons, it didn't work. Fercriously independent people accustomed to packing up their house and moving every few weeks did not take kindly to sixteen hour shifts in an airless factory, grinding grain for the Ukrainian Youth League.

After the Communists lost power in 1991, the suddenly sponsorless factory shuttered its doors, leaving most of the people in the town unemployed. A grant from the Japanese government allowed it to reopen several years later, but there is no sign of activity among the rust covered pylons and smoke stacks caked tar black from decades of grime. I cannot believe that this complex produces a basic food staple. I imagine any flour that comes from this place to be inedible, laced with carcinogens and additives.

We press on. The late afternoon sun is intense, even in the middle of the winter, and I am forced to unzip my bulbous down jacket and remove my scarf. Today, for the first time in weeks, there is water mixed in with the thin crust of snow on the ground. Approximately halfway between the ger and town, we encounter a sheep train. Two herders, both young men in dirty deels, solemnly march back toward a fenced in era to our north after a day of grazing in the mostly barren fields. The sheep seemed well accustomed to humans, and do not baa or complain in any nonverbal way as we snake through the herd.

These few animals are the last sign of natural life we will see on this walk, for Kharkhorin appears to a Hollywood post-Apocalyptic set brought to life. The first building we pass in the town proper is a prison, decaying like every other structure here. Thankfully, no inmates are about, the only sign of life is a couple bare light bulbs glowing in the middle of a window. There is no fence around the building, as if there is nothing worthwhile about the place for people locked up inside to escape.

The prison is one of the more solidly constructed places in town. The streets, all unpaved and filled with slushy potholes, are lined with cheaply constructed buildings of concrete. Some are shops, others small homes. The residences are designed in the same style as in Tsesterleg: square lots, fenced in with mismatched hardwood pickets, with a ger or tiny house placed in the middle. Many lots have a latrine in the back, and I suspect no running water inside.

As soon as I arrive in the town, I realize that we have no reason for coming here. We have plenty of provisions back and dinner waiting in the ger, and there are no tourist attractions or museums on the town's few streets. Every business we pass is shuttered, presumably for the Mongolian New Year, but perhaps because the owners have fled someplace nicer.

Kharkhorin is a blot of the beautiful landscape of Mongolia. It is an argument against urbanization, for here there are not enough people for an interesting, vibrant gathering of people, but enough so that the combined waste and pollution of several hundred families can congeal into a bloody mess. This is perhaps the most depressing place I have ever visited, sadder than the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the KGB Prison in Lithuania, for here the despair does not seem to be improving.

With no other plan, the three of us walk a rectangle around town, with each small street more depressing than the next. We walk mostly in silence. I am amazed at how forlorn this place is; it is so down that it seems beyond a cheery joke or two. Just as we are about to make our third right turn, and begin the last segment of the rectangle, a small building catches my eye. It appears to be a small bagoda, but there are no windows to peer inside. But under the scratched door I see a light.

I want to go inside. I want there to be a point, some redeeming value in this ugly place. But as I make a move to go in, Myriam stops me.

"Wait," she says, and I reconsider. What is behind the door? And why do I need to go inside?

In all probability, there is just a gaunt, frail Mongolian man on the other side of the door with a small selection on canned goods. But I realize there is no reason for me to found out, nor do I want to take the risk of endangering my friends by going inside. The entrance is closed, and there is no sign I can tell that the store is open. This, it appears, is my limit.

Deep Throat

KARAKORUM, Mongolia - Bobby is my guide on this five day tour through Mongolia's outer aimags, but since neither my companions nor I are paying her any money for the privilege, we are careful not to make arcane requests. I have not demanded a chance to sample the local delicacy of boodog - lamb mutton roasted in the stomach of a deboned marmot - nor requested a retelling of the her parents' experiences during the Communist purges of the Khorloogiin Choibalsan (Stalin's neighborhood stooge). No, I've tried to avoid anything that might make Bobby reconsider her generosity and run back to Ulaanbaatar.

But I didn't even need to ask Bobby about my greatest Mongol desire: She brought the throat singer to me.

For the final night on the steppe, we drove several hours from Tserterleg to Karakorum, the old Khanate capital. The city is a major stop on Mongolia's minor league tourist circuit. In the summer, thousands of people pass through here to see where Genghis Khan's grandson issued decrees for subjects as far away as Romania. During peak season there are apparently sizable, if not Great Wall-level, crowds but on this blustery February afternoon, I could not see any other foreign faces as we drove through town to our destination: a tiny ger camp at the edge of a field.

Although the tourists are gone for the season, the infrastructure remains. We no sooner arrived than Bobby asked if we wanted to hear a local man perform traditional music in the evening. The cost would be just 4,000 tugrugs, or $3.50 a person. Even though I am generally leery of song-and-dance on the tourist trail, I feared declining might offend Bobby, the sole link to our monolingual Mongolian hosts. We agreed to the show. Bobby went off to contact the performer, but not before - perhaps she felt emboldened by how quickly we agreed - pointing in the direction of the camp's only building, a tiny wooden structure. Inside we found a wrinkled woman with beet-red, wind sheared cheeks, offering dozens of tchockes for sale.

Seconds later, Bobby appears without her usual smile. "The old man did not answer his phone," she said. "I guess he is not home."

Caleb, holding a camel figurine, whispered to me: "That means he's too drunk to leave the house. He's on a bender."

Bobby then left us to shop. We were standing in a one-room house the size of a small walk-in closet, crowding around a few sleeves of knick-knacks, wasting time before a dinner of mutton buuz and pickled vegetables. The Mongolians we encountered (continued to) confounded my western ideas of living spaces. Here the proprietors live and serve meals in a ger, keep guests in a second ger, and use the only permanent structure on their property as a gift shop. Considering the way the gelid winds pierced the cracks in the cabin's siding, my hosts are clearly not irrational, just adaptable.

With the concert apparently off the table, we four guests continued with preparations for our final evening on the road. Caleb fetched a bottle of cheap Russian vodka from his pack, I found bottles of Coke and Sprite for mixers and Myriam produced a pack of cards. But I no sooner dealt the first hands of hearts when Bobby burst into the ger with good news. The old man not only has been found, he is next door, waiting to perform. As a manner of introduction, she asks - in the most pro forma way possible - if we are still interested in a bit of music. When we nod, she sticks her head out of the canvas and gestures with her hand. A few seconds later, the evening's entertainment steps into the ger.

In walks someone who appeared to have several decades of hard-living under his belt. The "old man" - whose Mongolian name I immediately forget - sports a face that is covered not with wrinkles but full crevices, scores of lines that look more like heavily whipped meringue than skin, and eyelashes that bush in every direction except perpendicular to his eyes. Take away his garments, an olive green del with a bright orange cumberbun and a loovus, the traditional Mongolian hat that curves to a point like the onion domes of St. Basil's in Moscow, and the person he would most resemble in America is a Berkley hobo. I am surprised he can walk a straight line from the ger door to small bench, where he lays down his bundle of instruments and begins the show.

"Hello," he says, tentatively, and then launches into what is certainly a well-trodden tour through the Mongolian folk song canon. He sings a tune about doomed lovers, a ballad to the country's open spaces, and two songs about a horse. Between each tune he pauses to tell a bit of history behind the composition, at first speaking in Mongolian and having Bobby translate, but as the evening progresses switching to stuttering English, which is not hard to comprehend.

His act is vaudevillian and high-spirited, he works the claustrophobic ger and audience of five as if playing a large concert hall. He taps his feet with the beat, and flashes his decaying teeth filled smile during the pause between verses and choruses. Instruments are swapped out between nearly every song. He starts with a two-string fiddle known in Chinese as the erhu, which is played by rubbing a bow of horse hair across the instrument's long neck. The next piece is played on a small recorder-like flute, and then he switches to a bigger stringed, instrument, the morin khuur. It resembles a guitar with a square base. Like the erhu, it has just two strings, and is played like a bow. When played by the old man, the tones are long and deep, like the rumble of a commercial airliner high in the atmosphere.

The instruments and lyrics of these songs are secondary to the way they are sung. Bobby did not specifically say the Old Man was a throat singer, but it is clear from the first note that this man has mastered the technique. There is no mistaking the two tones filling the air.

When I first encountered throat singing - on Bjork's 2004 album Medulla - it was like discovering a new, secret part of the English language. It was as if before I was a songwriter composing with just E and F, and suddenly became aware of every other note. Suddenly there was just so much more to music. Now, hearing it performed live for the first time, those feelings of discovery are magnified by a factor of ten.

Throat singing, like everything else alien to Westerners, has now been throughly dissected by scientists and ethnographers. We know that the sound, technically known as overtone singing is produced by changing the shape of the resonant cavities in the mouth and throat. This allows people to produce two pitches at once, as the sound is bounced around in the vocal chambers.

But I don't care if throat singing is easily explained. No matter how hard I try, I can't make my throat make the high and low pitches that I normally associate with hearing tests and dishwasher cycles, yet here most men can do it with ease. I think there is something magical about the magnificently bizarre sight of an aging drunkard making these otherworldly sounds. He may look disheveled, but by the time he finished with a cover of The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" on the horse-head fiddle, it didn't matter. This was the concert of the year.

The Buddha on the Hill

TSETSERLEG, Mongolia - Caleb stares, one hand on his forehead to shield the midday sun, with unusual intensity at the small rocky hill, just above us. Strangely, he ignores the most prominent object in his line of sight, a 20 meter statue of the future Buddha, Maitreya, carved out of white rock. Instead, his eyes scan the rocky crags of the hillside.

"I'll be back," he said, and he goes off into the wilderness to exorcise his demons.

There are many ghosts in this place. In the year 1706, Zanabazar, a Mongolian warlord, picked this spot to build a temple to the Buddhist Goddess Tara. A holy man, Zanabazar studied for many years in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa before returning to his native land and taking up the sword. When the sage died nine years later, his body was mummified in a lotus position and placed in a stumpa, a Buddhist holy relic, on the site. Generations passed, and the monastery prospered. At its peak in the early twentieth century, more than 2,000 monks studied here, making it one of the largest and most powerful monasteries in the country.

Then came a murder. In 1931, Mongolia's new Communist government feared the monastery's power: Tsetserleg and the holy men were said to support anti-government movements. One night, to counteract the perceived threat, the Communists killed the abbot, who was known as the Sixth Zaya Pandita. They also leveled the monastery, leaving only two temples, one of which was turned in a fire station. In the purges that followed, hundreds of former monks were tortured or killed.

But Caleb's nostalgia is from another time. Two years ago, on leave from teaching English in Ulaanbaatar, he and a fellow teacher rode out here, crammed into a battered van with a dozen other Mongolians. They took over half a day to arrive, and when they did, they found the town closed for Tsagaan Sar, the Mongolian New Year. The only open hotel had no heat and only sporadic cold water, hard mattresses and dim lighting. At the first opportunity, they went outside.

They walked to the monastery, past the statue of Maitreya, over the small hill and into the valley below. It was cold, but they walked at a steady pace, descending into a wooded glade. After a of couple hours, frozen perspiration on the edges of their hats, they decided to turn back. By then the sun hung low in the sky, and was about to disappear behind the hills above and end the short winter day. Soon the two hikers were surrounded by darkness, hopelessly lost. They had few supplies, and none of the warm layers of fur the nomads rely on to buttress themselves from the cold nights.

They kept walking. There was no other choice, really, except to lie down and accept a slow death by freezing. Sometime in the night, they heard a noise, the crunching of footsteps in the crusty snow. The footsteps were those of a passing herder, out with his flock of sheep. With customary Mongolian courtesy, he pointed the lost adventurers in the direction of Tsetserleg, and not long afterwards they found themselves back at the dingy hotel, cold, damp, and tired but alive.

Now, back in town for the first time since that night, Caleb runs in the direction of his misfortune. He scampers toward the top of the hill. I watch his progress from the statue's base, as he pauses briefly and then heads down into a col. Just a moment later his appears, the wind snapping his checkered black and white scarf as he lunges from boulder to boulder toward the peak. He reaches the top and then is suddenly out of view.

Sometime later, as I shoot pictures of the town's distant gers and crumbling schools, Caleb returns. He says nothing, but I take his tranquil expression to mean that by returning here, he has made peace with this haunted valley and the chilling time he almost became one of its ghosts.

A Day at the Races

TSETSERLEG, Mongolia – How do you set your watch to Mongolian Time?

If you are familiar with the temporal concept known variously as "French Time," "Black People Time," "Island Time" and "College Freshman Time," your watch will need no adjustment. Mongolians, too, are constantly late.

As with any culture not known for punctuality, it's not that people here are so busy they cannot keep appointments. It's just that there's not a high priority placed on getting there exactly at the specified time. Mongolians dawdle, loaf and mosey; rarely do they run.

So when Bobby informed us last night that we would attend the Tsetserleg New Year's Horse Race at 8 a.m. the next morning, we probably should not have set our alarms for seven.

After a protracted farewell to our warm sleeping bags, Myriam the Frontierswoman tries to revive the fire, and I head for the loo. Outside in the dawn light, I am able to take stock of our accommodations. We are staying in a ger, but out the door, instead of the endless steppe, there is a wooden picket fence. This is the backyard of our hosts, who are sleeping, along with Battir and bobby, inside their two bedroom house.The arrangement is an elaborate visual joke. The Mongolians packed up and moved into a warm toasty house with central heat, while white folks travel hundreds of miles to stay in some pieces of canvas thrown up on top of some dead grass. They also pay for the privilege.

Half an hour later, our host's daughter appears with some hot water, Mongolian milk tea, and fried doughnuts. We nosh on the food as we stuff and zipper our overstuffed packs back together. Then we switch to cards, and play a couple of rounds of hearts. Eight comes and goes, and soon it's almost nine.

"Where are they?" I say.

"Uh." Caleb says, exasperated. "It's always like this."

Battir pokes his rosy cheeks into the ger soon after, hunting for our belongings. The van is packed in 10 minutes, but Bobby continues conversing indoors about the price of yak cheese, or whatever. Soon the host family's two sons amble out of the house, apparently bored silly by the grownups' conversation. They bring a basketball with them, and we alternate taking shots against a square piece of wood that's been nailed to the top of a metal pole to form a makeshift hoop.

Bobby finally appears, smiling and apparently free of worry. She informs us that there is a small problem with the van, and that Battir needs to change a part of the tire. We will leave soon, she assures her slightly perturbed clients. Then she goes back inside, leaving us to dribble. We don't pull out of the gravel driveway for another 45 minutes, or just before 11 a.m.

Tseterleg is a small town, but with 15,000 people, it ranks as Mongolia's seventh largest population center. Most people live in small fenced pieces of property, in grey-and-white homes of poured concrete. If there is any beauty in the place, it is in spite of the town's design, which imposes a drab Soviet grid on the golden hills of the steppe. The town is built on the banks of two hills, with the administrative buildings situated in the bottom of the narrow valley. Our host lived high on the east-facing hill, so Battir must take a looping road down to the center.

I doubt there's one traffic cop in Tseterleg or the surrounding state, but Battir drives as if he's under constant threat of citation. Not helping matters is the fact that he does not appear to know our destination. Bobby is constantly chatting and pointing in different directions at each intersection. We eventually reach the base of the hill, and Battir turns off the engine. Bobby darts out of the van, but not without first telling everyone to stay inside. I peer out the window to discover we've stopped not at the race course, but at Mongolia's strangest restaurant.

Although it is well advertised in the guidebooks, I found it impossible to believe the Fairview Restaurant existed until I saw the building, smack in the middle of Tsetserleg. Here in a town where a three window concrete block building functions as a hospital, is an ex-pat run restaurant that serves lasagna, chili con carne, burgers and pies. An oasis in a desert of fatty mutton, the Lonely Planet claims this restaurant is the best in the entire country.

The previous evening, a rumor had spread through the van that we would stop at the Fairview for dinner, but that turned out to be false. I thought we'd get a burger for lunch, but Bobby returned to the van after 15 minutes with just a business card. As the van continued its crawl around town, she explained that she wanted to talk with the owners about forming a partnership. Satisfied with the place, Bobby will start recommending guests at the UB Guesthouse eat the Fairview. As for us, unfortunately, the place was closed for the New Year.

We continued driving down the gravel streets, until Battir made a left and suddenly we were in a long, narrow field. Scattered throughout were locals with their horses, motorcycles and ramshackle cars. This was the race course.

There is no admission fee for the race, nor any refreshments or announcer shouting the proceedings in staccato voice. Instead people just stood around, chatting. Battir drove the van right through the middle, and at an arbitrary place, stopped. I no sooner put on my scarf and stepped out when people started to scream and point far in the distance. The horses! After running a lap around the entire valley -- about 15 miles, the leading riders were sprinting toward the finish line. The brown mares galloped at an incredible speed, so quickly that shortly after I first their dust trail, I saw the leading horse itself, and only seconds before it crossed the finish line.

The winning rider, a diminutive boy not more than 10 years old, finished not three minutes after we arrived. We came at precisely the correct moment.

In this case, Mongolian Time meant right on time.

The Overlap

MOGOD, Mongolia – Sociologists, psychologists and geneticists agree: we are unique little snowflakes.

Children are encouraged from the time they enter their first classes in school to find out how they are unique. Not long after they learn how to write, they are required to fill in worksheets defining who they: favorite color, favorite music, strange talent. Every individual preference needs to be recognized and codified as soon as possible.

This differentiation may be good for a developing a child's sense of self, but the average group of elementary school students also have a great deal in common. Most of their short lives have been defined by their localities, including the classrooms, neighborhoods and restaurants they share. So, on the first day of classes, while these children are strangers in many ways, they also have numerous shared experiences to talk about: Where did you go to summer camp? Have you been to the new Cheesecake Factory? Did you see Transformers at the downtown cinema or in the mall?

On the other hand, if you are on the road, this isn't true. When I met Caleb three bites into a piece of bread and Nutella, I could assume nothing. His look is something I regrettably refer to as "ambiguously ethnic." He does not look Western European. His nose is long and ends in a round bulb, his thin hazelnut hair is messily parted in the middle, and his skin is neither a pale Scandinavian nor dark Iberian complexion. This face is the pre-requisite for a spy: Caleb could pass as a citizen from any Warsaw Pact nation. It was a visage that gave nothing away.

And then he opened his mouth, said hello, and the hunt to discover our commonalities began. Our conversation started in the hostel kitchen, continued in the common living room, down the stairs, onto the streets of Ulaanbaatar, and then in the back seat of Battir's van.

In the van, there is much time for stories. I knew our route would trace a rough circle starting and ending in Ulaanbaatar, but not until we spent a couple of days on the road did I realize the circle's vast diameter. Every day we spent at least five hours on the road, and sometimes as many as eight. Bobby makes sure to stop periodically for bathroom breaks, Khanate ruins and scenic vistas, but after a few minutes we are shepherded back into our transport. Delaying only makes the arrival time later, it does not shorten the journey.

Things start at the first place our lives intersect – nationality. Caleb is my first American since America, and comes from just outside of Northampton, a town in Massachusetts not an hour from my own. We have both made pilgrimages to Crossgates Mall and the Pepsi Arena, the Clark Institute and the track at Saratoga.

Our universities are similar, mine Tufts, his Reed. Both are liberal arts schools with liberal, international focuses. We both followed our school's ideals by heading off into the world, studying at another university, in a place where we did not speak the language. Perhaps most importantly, we are both in the middle of an adventure most would consider imprudent and quixotic.

Caleb left Cairo several weeks ago on a plane flight to London. He spent New Year's in Paris, stayed with friends in Berlin, and took a long bus to St. Petersburg. There he admired the art – sometime later he would upload nearly 100 pictures of the Hermitage, the repository of the Czar's treasures – and the atmosphere. Caleb is a great lover of the Russian spirit, the melancholy of Dostoevsky, Chekov and Bulgakov.

In Moscow, Caleb looked up a distant relation – a third, fourth, or fifth cousin with the same last name. When asked by his host what he wanted to see, Caleb immediately replied, "Take me to the place where the Devil appears in The Master and Margarita
Caleb's route paralleled mine, but where his trip went right, my tacked left. In Moscow he found family; I spent long nights cooped up with fellow travelers in the hostel. My kupe train ride saw a group of strangers welcoming me into their small group, but Caleb spent the time mostly alone, and just occasionally with a non-communicative cabin mate or two. I spent three days in Ulan Ude, tramping out to Siberian temples and sampling Chinese cuisine. Caleb spent just a few hours waiting for his next train.

The place where our two Venn Diagrams intersect the most is an idea: our love of the precarious and hazardous, the need for the uncertain, the quest for a tomorrow unlike today. To find this adventure, we are headed to similar places. I am going to Beijing, Caleb to Hohhot, a city in the Chinese Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. We will both try to conquer the Chinese language – our current, elementary level is unacceptable – and use it to try to solve the enigma that is China. We understand that things may not go according to plan.

We talk and talk and talk. We go on so long that Myriam and Cing fall asleep, Battir's tape repeats eight times and the sun moves most of the way across the sky. We talk so much that Cing wakes up and teases that we should be ones sleeping, and the two women chatting. But then she closes her eyes again and the conversation continues, for we have so much in common.

Try This Tape

ARKHANGAI AIMAG, Mongolia – Battir and I have different tastes in music. He prefers saccharine love songs with milquetoast melodies belted out by Ulaanbaatar's latest pre-fab teen sensation. I prefer, well, not that.

Since Battir is the only person who can drive, navigate and repair our aging Soviet van out here on the steppes, we've been listening to mostly soft rock and power ballads on the trip. As there's no radio stations out of the capital area and no one here possesses an angelic voice, we would be hearing these cloying tunes over and over again, if I hadn't remembered to pack a small piece of plastic. This $10 accessory from Sony is an over-looked but essential bit of equipment for anyone planning on a long overland journey in a third world country.

I'm talking about a car tape adapter, a piece of plastic that resembles a cassette tape with a long cord strung off the end. These devices were popular in the 90's, when they allowed drivers to listen to CD players in older cars. Now most American cars come with CD players standard, and these devices have little use.

Not in Mongolia. On the first day of trip, one hour after leaving the UB Guesthouse, Battir slid a tape into the antique van's antique system. We heard a Mongolian love song, with a Celine Dion tempo and a gently played Casio keyboard. Another song came on, indistinguishable from the first, and another and another. Then, after the fifth song, I heard a familiar drum pattern, then a few keyboard chords I'd heard before. And the singer didn't sound like a copy of the one earlier in the tape, she was a clone. It took nearly 30 seconds - 25 more than it should have - for me to piece together what was going on: the tape had started over.

As we drove through champagne colored fields splattered with a thin patch of crusty snow, the tape looped and looped. Out of courtesy, I said nothing. I concentrated on the alien scenery, counted the stray sheep and tried to remember every state capital. Anything to drown out the muzak.

By lunch on the second day, I stopped being polite. I rummaged through my internal frame pack until I found the cassette adapter and marched over to Battir. Now, it took me some to do this. Battir is an imposing figure, a gigantic six-foot five inches with a rotund belly. At age 26, he is still growing. He easily consumes twice as many buuzat dinner as any other member of the crew, and on some nights approaches our combined food intake. Battir wrestled as a teenager, and competed in the national championships during the Nadaam Festival, Mongolia's most important holiday. He's massive man, someone who in America would be a bouncer at a gentleman's club.

Thankfully, I've learned this guy is a big softy. My first was the music - a Mongolian alpha-male listens strictly to gangsta-rap. Then there's the smile. It's hard to be afraid of someone, no matter how big he is, when he wears a goofy grin from cheek to cheek. Battir's is constant. Whether unloading hundreds of pounds of luggage from the van or checking the oil, he never stops smiling.

Confident the man wouldn't try any wrestling moves, I gave Battir the tape and pointed to the player. "Put this in there," I said, even though Battir doesn't speak a word of English. And with a smile, he did just that.

Half a second later, the booming bass of Basement Jaxx's "Where's Your Head At?" came on the stereo. It's been a long time since I've heard Western music outside of my teeny iPod earbuds, and it sounded great. All that afternoon, the car worked through a lengthy playlist of hit songs. We sang along to R.E.M., U2, Nelly, Jay-Z and Eminem. It was wonderful, even if I did sing slightly off-key.

Something Old, Something Digital

TERKHIIN TSAGAAN NUUR, Mongolia – From the outside, the ger where the resident family lives and the one where I'm staying are identical except for a small detail: the family's ger has a satellite dish. That's right: the canvas tent next to mine has a satellite dish. Not the tiny kind that people in the Bronx string on a fire escape or rooftop, but a six-foot model that's wider than the door. Here I am 400 miles from the nearest city, in the middle of a mountain range, staying in a collapsible home, but my hosts get more channels than I do in the States.

Oh, I know I shouldn't be shocked that there is television on the steppes. The Indo-American author Pico Iyer traveled around the region 20 years ago and reported back about "Video Night in Kathmandu." In the rather ponderous final product, Iyer argued that people around the world, no matter how from "civilization" they may appear to live, are being drawn into our globalized world.

Good for them. Too often, Westerners come to places such as the Great White Lake, and expect to find indigenous people living exactly the way their ancestors did 1,500 years ago. Meanwhile, these same people have an iPhone on order to be delivered as soon as they are available in New York. I despise "native" rituals, so common in China, hate "sacred dances" and "traditional rites" performed three times a day for tourists.

Mongolia is refreshingly different. I won't say the place is "authentic," rather the Mongolians approach to tourism, at least on this trip, is just more laid-back. Once we left the capital, there have been no stops at souvenir stands, no detours to cheaply restored cultural relics with steep admission fees. People here don't apologize for their lives.

At our first ger, Battir's family extended extraordinary hospitality, but made no attempts to hide away the trappings of twenty-first century life. Some of the family wore the traditional Mongolian herder's outfit, the del, while the teenagers strolled around in jeans and knock-off sweatshirts. In one corner of the ger hung a series of family portraits taken during a visit to Ulaanbaatar's Sukhbaatar Square. At night, we listened to the radio.

Here at the Great White Lake, we arrive just before dark and immediately are shown the same kindness. Inside the family's ger, we down buuz and buuz in soup and take the obligatory shots of vodka. The oldest man in the house starts asking questions through Bobby, our guide. Where are we from? Are we students? How is Mongolia?

We talk until nine, when Bobby takes to our sleeping quarters. Rather than bunking next to the fire, this night we sleep in a ger specially for tourists, one with five beds and no wall of photos. The arrangement here is more a business proposition than the one we found on our first night, as this family relies on tourism for their income.

The next day, we wake up to plates of stale bread and a young girl warming the embers of the fire, making it safe to crawl out of our sleeping bags. As we wait for the adults to rally, the girl shows us a game. She takes out a worn bag of shagai, or sheep ankle bones, and shows us how to play shagai dice. The bone pieces, which are about two inches long and an inch wide with a S-shaped curve, are thrown in pieces. Each side is an animal: camel, horse, goat or sheep. Players take turns rolling the dice, moving a set number of places based on the animals thrown (horse is great, camels stink), until someone "wins" the race.

Cing is smitten with the game, and after Bobby arrives she has Bobby ask the girl the price of a set. The girl is visibly puzzled: She clearly brought out the dice as a way of making friends with the guests, not making a sale. After a lengthy discussion, she finally accepts 5,000 turgug, or $4.50.

Her mother arrives shortly afterward, and then there is a subtle shift in her behavior. They stop being just hospitable and start offering "service." The mother wants to know if we would like to try on dels and go horseback riding to the lake. I shoot Caleb a look and at the same time I see Myriam glancing a Cing: we all realize this is ridiculous, but don't want to offend the host family. They believe that we came to Mongolia and expect a bit of a show. So, as a courtesy we accept the mother's offer, and soon her husband appears with a large trunk. Inside are a few crisply folded del. A del resembles a one piece, knee-high dress made with thick cotton. As with all things Mongolian, it is extremely functional: the open legs allow a rider to comfortably be in the saddle all day while insulation protects against the wind. The four tourists are each handed a piece in his or her own size. Myriam and Cing both wiggle into plum-colored garments, Caleb's is maroon with a repeating gold circular pattern, and mine a dull shade of gray. Our hosts tie colorful belts to complete the ensembles.

We are then paraded outside, where our noble steeds await. A young man, perhaps 10 or 11, helps Caleb, Cing and I mount (Myriam, of course, needs no assistance). Our handler arranges us in a line, and then requests our cameras. Then, with the young guide and his even smaller brother in the lead, we are sent in the direction of the lake, three kilometers distant.

On the way, with my horse frequently running off-course, I have plenty of time to ponder the family. They brought out a bit of kitsch - dressing us up in colorful costumes and taking snapshots to send home to Mom and Dad - but they didn't put on a mask in their dealings with us. There is no pretension that these people are herders who live off the land and spend their evenings reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead by candlelight. They're in the tourist industry, making three dollars a night for hosting and feeding a foreigner, and an additional two dollars for every hour someone rides a horse. It's not much, but with few expenses, it means enough for something special from time to time.

Here's my only question: When the yuppies in the Patagonia jackets arrive, do they hide the satellite dish?

Myriam Takes the Reins

TERKHIIN TSAGAAN NUUR, Mongolia – I summoned my inner cowboy, felt the noise build from deep in my gullet, and then bellowed so loudly that the sides of the frost-lined mountains echoed.

"CHU!" I said, but nothing happened.

My diminutive transport continued to munch on brown tufts of grass, ignoring my command to go. I tried again, this time with a gentle voice.

"Chu." And again and again. "Chu, chu, chu."

The obstinate equine would not budge. He could somehow sense the novice rider (and poor speaker of Mongolian) in the saddle. Then a knight in a reindeer coat galloped up beside us, and barked the order with such gravitas that the horse had no choice but to trot. Myriam, once again, showed why she is the group's naturalist.

I profile Myriam at great risk, because she is one of the most mercurial personalities I have ever met. Her vivacious enthusiasm hides a complex person, someone who can't be pinned down. I'm sure the Myriam I know is quite different from the Myriam I would have met off the steppes.

So, I start with the irrefutable. Myriam is German, her nationality clear from the first word out of her mouth. Her cadences are a bit abnormal, drawing out "o" and "u" sounds for an extra beat. Her natural tendency is to reach for the longer cognate, using compound words that are seldom found outside of English academic literature. She sometimes says "jaa."

Her hometown is a small village in Southern Germany. Her parents run a biodynamic farm. I've never heard the term before, but apparently they raise livestock and vegetables using organic methods and renewable energy. Here Myriam learned how to ride a horse. She adores animals, and pets anything in sight with fur or feathers.

Despite their reputation for punctuality, Germans dawdle through school. She spent most of her childhood in a Steiner School (sometimes called a "Waldorf Education"), where pupils don't use standardized textbooks, they create their own illustrated guides to the material. Significant amounts of time were spent being creative, with many art and music lessons. Rote learning and grades were minimized, although when they were introduced, she did well. Myriam graduated from high school at the age of 19, and will take between four and six years to earn her bachelors. In between she is taking two Gap years, to break up the long stays in academia.

She wanted to do a long-term volunteer project, so when she heard about a Swiss-Russian charity that sponsored a village for mentally and physical handicapped Russians, she pledged a year of her life. Incredibly, Myriam spoke no Russian. She boarded a plane for Irkutsk, 5,000 miles away, without knowing a word of the language. On arrival, a man drove her 60 miles to her new work site. There is no Internet, no cable television, just a few buildings, a barn and some animals. She works alongside a few Russian staff members, and one other volunteer, who is Swiss.

Two months after she arrived, Myriam felt ill. Her stomach hurt so badly that the village van took her to a hospital in Irkutsk. The doctors determined she had appendicitis, and removed the vestigial organ. Maybe a surgeon did not sanitize the scalpel or a nurse had a touch of the flu, because Myriam continued to deteriorate after the surgery. She slipped into a coma, probably from an infection. Worried, the hospital staff called Myriam's parents on the farm.

At this point in the story, my mouth is open and my eyebrows are arched from worry. But Myriam continues her near-death tale in a jaunty tone, as if this was a perfectly normal string of events. "After five days I woke up," she said. "My parents, they were worried for me, jaa. But they knew if it was my time, it was my time."

After a couple weeks of recovery, Myriam resumed her unpaid position deep in the forest. She shared a stuffy room with the Swiss girl, washed dishes, planted crops, and hauled equipment. She supervised the mentally-challenged patients, some of whom were prone to fits of violence and hysteria. They have few resources and little support in this isolated village; most Russians stigmatize the mentally and physically ill. What little money comes in is mostly from selling crafts made by the residents at European craft fairs and specialty shops. Myriam works tirelessly; her respite trips to Irkutsk are weeks apart and then only for a day or two.

For the first month Myriam was essentially a deaf-mute. She could not express her desires or understand what people around her wanted. Slowly, slowly the words came. She wrote them down, made lists and practiced over and over with the residents. Soon she had phrases, then sentences. And as the months went by, she got to know the people around her along with the language. Now her Russian is at a level where she finds it easier to speak to most Mongolians in Russian rather than in the English she's learned in grade school.

Myriam finds satisfying what to most would be unbearable. She's in Mongolia on a holiday, a holiday mandated by her continued to desire to work. Russia would only issue this tireless volunteer a six-month visa, so she had to head south and wait for the embassy to slowly process a couple of pieces of paper. The current estimate is two weeks.

So she came out here to the countryside, back to open spaces and wild horses. Wearing a bell bottom-shaped coat of reindeer fur given to her by a colleague in Russia, she mounts her steed without assistance – unlike the other three riders on this particular day.

With a single "CHU!" she takes off to the south. After a few paces the olive-colored scarf with tiny croqueted roses tied around her neck takes flight, forming a train of fabric that flows backward, as she charges ahead, toward adventure.

Stinky Pile of Poo

LÜN, Mongolia — I don't need to say what's absent from a Mongolian rest stop, but I will anyway. No McDonald's, no Sbarros, no chain restaurants selling foot-long sandwiches, no refillable Big Gulp glasses that hold more than a liter of soda and cost under a dollar, no windshield wiper fluid or premium grade gasoline, no friendly Mexicans who wave as they mop the filthy floors. This is not a place for swanky service - here, a rest stop is classy if it has a bathroom.

(Disclaimer: The following post contains some frank discussion of human bodily functions. If offended, please don't continue — but keep in mind Everyone Poops.)




There's no room for the picky eater on the wide open Mongolian transportation system. On our first day, we left Ulaanbaatar in the mid-morning and were off the pavement less than half an hour later. When the sun made it to the highest point in the sky, Bobby, our de-facto guide, turned around and posed a question.

"There is a place where we can have lunch. It may not be open. Should we stop?"

Our stomaches, rattled though they may be from our van's questionable shocks, demanded nourishment. And since we had not passed an eating establishment for hours, we could not be choosy. Fortunately, the small wooden house optimistically called a café was open, and we took seats at the largest of three tables inside.

Traditional Mongolian dishes were served, or more to the point, a traditional Mongolian dish. After having the group study the menu for five minutes, Bobby emerged from the kitchen to inform us that we would be eating mutton stew with a side of rice. We stopped by on New Year's Day, and were not surprisingly the only customers. That meant freshly prepared food, and we had to wait for the stout chef to cut every hunk of meat and simmer an appropriate amount of time. Mongolian wrestling, live from Ulaanbaatar, was the only distraction on the television. I watched for several minutes as two obese men attempted to force each other out of a ring. I now understand why many top sumo wrestlers are Mongolian.

The rumbling on the set caused a rumbling in my bowels. This was a bit unusual, as I believe my intestinal track has a sixth sense and intuitively knows when I'm entering a new territory. I normally have two, sometimes three days in unfamiliar ground before I need an outhouse. Out on the steppe, I got just six hours.

Asked about a bathroom, the chef pointed out the window towards nowhere. I walked outside, expecting to pop a squat in an open field, but instead I followed the specified plane and saw a small brown shed a couple of hundred meters in the distance. On closer inspection, the structure used the same primitive log cabin design as the restaurant, except here the boards seemed thrown together rather than carefully laid out. The latrine had three sides, an open entrance which meant relieving oneself while facing The Great Outdoors, and a low ceiling. Once inside, I surprisingly smelled no odor; the waste was frozen solid.

I did my business, and then looked down into the hole. In a hole that appeared eight feet deep, there was a long, thin pile of poo reaching six feet back toward the earth. It was the refuse of thousands of protein-rich meals, all ejected in the same alignment.

I did some quick mental math: at this rate, the latrine could be overflowing before spring. And then I had a new candidate for world's worst job: knocking down a frozen pile of feces in the bottom of a cesspit. What tool would be right for the job? A hoe, maybe a spade. Maybe that wouldn't be enough to cut through the solid matter. Perhaps an ax would be needed, or pots of boiling water to soften the mound.

I should be thankful. The latrine's three walls protected my nether regions from the biting winds, and there was no chance that any fecal matter would accidentally wind up on my shoes. Mongolia isn't the most developed country in the world, but they haven't let the shit overflow — yet.

Home Sweet Ger

Near BALGAI, MONGOLIA — Preparing for bed on the steppe is a strange ritual. First I take off the clothes I wore to keep warm during the day: the fuzzy brown sweater, the two layers of long underwear, the smoky pair of Gap cargo pants. All of them are covered in sweat, sweat that will freeze in the night and lower my body temperature. I rummage through my bag for new set of clothes: another layer of long underwear, blue sleep pants, a T-shirt and a hat. I put on the sleep pants and the T-shirt, but keep the long underwear tucked under my shoulder, to hide under my pillow for later. Only then can I put on a fresh pair of wool socks and tuck myself into the Mummy sleeping bag.

Maintaining the appropriate body temperature during the night will take balance. I must weigh the heat of the fire against the icy winds of the steppe outside. It's four hours after dark and already Bobby's pocket thermometer reads -20 on a quick trip outside. Getting through the night, like everything else out here in the Mongolian countryside, requires careful planning.

Thankfully, I don't need to invent a way to survive out here. Our hosts, with decades of experience and the wisdom passed down from generations of nomads, are experts. The most important line of defense against the elements is the ger. The ger, usually called a "yurt" in English, is a specialized tent with features even the most advanced North Face structure can't match. The base of the structure is a circular lattice of wood, about four feet high. At the top of the lattice, several dozen wooden poles are angled inward so they meet in a small circle. This opening is the chimney, and it is supported by two thick beams that drop to the floor. These wooden pieces (which aren't found out here on the steppe, they come from distant forests) are wrapped around the outside in a thick layer of white canvas. In the winter, wool felt blankets are hung around the insides of the tent to keep out the howling winds.

The felt is less than an inch thick, but it's throughly windproof. On this cold night I can hear the wind howl, but it doesn't penetrate this warm space. A small iron stove is the only source of heat, and it's placed right in the center of the structure.



Our party arrived an hour after an awe-inspiring sunset with empty stomachs. Tonight, our hosts are the family of Battir, who Bobby has hired as our van driver. We've only met a day earlier, but Battir's mother, father and sister are very welcoming when we haul our still clean bags from the van. They implore us to take off our coats, and start feeding us bowls of buuz, a fatty mutton dumpling, and airag, fermented horse milk. Vodka comes out later, and we do several shots to honor our hosts.

By 9 p.m. the bottle is put away, Battir goes off to an adjoining ger where Bobby and he will spend the night. Bobby then begins to figure out sleeping arrangements. This ger, like all others, appears cylindrical from the outside, but in reality is five-sided. One side is the entrance, another contains a small armoire, and final three sides have thin mattresses that serve as chairs during the day, beds at night. Battir's mother and grandmother take one bed, Jin and Myriam squeeze on another side, while Battir's father has the smallest bed to himself. Caleb and I are placed on the floor on opposite sides of the fireplace.

Maybe it's the heavy dinner, or the excitement of beginning the journey, but I'm not tired after getting in my sleeping bag. I scan the surroundings. Grandma is already asleep. Husband and wife, sleeping in separate beds, are conducting conversation in whispers. A portable short wave radio is quietly playing an Old Mongolian folk tune. Then I return to the ger. The outside seems so plain, just a circle of off-white fabric, but inside it is colorful. A ring of hand stitched flowers has been carefully sewn and placed at eye level. The wool blankets that provide insulation are colorful scenes from nomadic life: a strutting ram, a picturesque sunset. In between one bed there are a few family photos, one of Grandma on a visit to Ulaanbaatar many years, another of a young Battir in front of his home. Opposite these is a small altar, where Buddhist prayers can be performed. Although the interior of the ger is wide open, each bit of space has been carefully compartmentalized, to ensure that all basic life functions can happen in this small space.

After the radio is turned off and the married couple stop chatting, I take stock of where I am. As the dateline suggests, I'm not entirely sure. We are somewhere "near" Balgai, a town of a few dozen, several hundred miles from anywhere. All that separates me from that nothingness is a couple of layers of felt and canvas. The mind wanders: If my heart stops, there is no defibrillator to restart it. If a piece of an old Soviet Military Satellite falls on me, there is no government official to report it. If quicksand swallows the ger whole, there is no one to pull us out. But I've already let these worries go. My eyelids are closed and in my dreams I head toward the stars.


Previously: "Welcome to Our Home"

Sun, Moon & Stars

TÔV AIMAG, Mongolia — Life happens in seconds, seconds that turn into hours and then days. Sometimes, though, a moment yanks us from the dreary tick of the clock and lifts the ordinary into the sublime. Today, incredibly, featured two such moments.

I'll start with the second. It was around 9 p.m: I stepped out of our ger with Cing, Caleb and Myriam. We told our hosts we were going for a walk, which Bobby translated into Mongolian only to receive a puzzled grin in response. Why leave the warmth of the fire, their faces said.

The night is chilly. It touches my face even though my scarf covers most of my cheeks. Caleb lights a cigarette. He quit in America, but after traveling through Russia and Mongolia, he's back to the habit. We set off in no particular direction, wandering a few steps to the west, then back toward the east before settling on the north. We stumble around for only a minute and then stop. There's no point in continuing. I look around, and in each direction there is nothing — only the faint glow coming from inside the ger. I strain my eyes in all directions, scanning 360 degrees to the limits of my near-sighted vision. I cannot see a thing — no other source of light.

For many city slickers, a formative childhood moment occurred during an early childhood vacation, staring up at the clear, dark sky. I signed up for the astronomy merit badge two years in a row at Scout Camp, so I could stay up late as a teenage counselor picked out constellations with a laser pointer. Tonight is ten times more intense. There is no faint glow of the city on the horizon, no summer cabin on the other side of the lake. This is a pre-civilization state of darkness.

The unobstructed sky is overflowing with points of light. The Milky Way rips a broad swath through the center. There must be several commercial airliners and 100 satellites high above. And I then realize then the night moves, flows like a body of water. I don't go back inside until my nose is frostbite white.

But before the stars can rise, the sun must set. Today the sunset made the van stop, even though Bobby wanted to reach the first camp by nightfall. The brilliant orange rays shone directly through the windshield. When they started to mix with deep pinks and rich shades of magenta, Cing suggested we pull over. Everyone rummaged desperately for a camera, to capture the last rays of light. In the foreground, the rolling hills of steppe went on and on until they covered the horizon. The thin, hard layer of snow sent the light bouncing off and toward our eyes.

The sun sets everyday, and the stars are always shining. But today something beautiful happened: the inevitable became incredible.

I don't post many pictures here, mainly because I believe this should be a place to practice my writing, to put my travels into words. I'm reminded of something the author Paul Theroux says in his essay collection, "Sunrise with Sea Monsters." Young Theroux explains that he doesn't carry a camera, because he's afraid the technology will make him lazy. Instead he pushes for the right words to describe the experience. At the time of the writing, Theroux wonders if he'll ever have the skills to capture a moment in Paris when a group of pigeons took flight from a spire high on Notre Dame. He'd been three years trying to find what to say, and hadn't succeeded. Maybe someday I, too, can present this post without images, but for now I think the image below helps one appreciate the awesomeness of that sunset.

A Hasty Assembly

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — We were four, six if you count Bobby and Battir, but they do this for work and can't be counted among the adventurers. Fate brought us together, plus a common belief that costs should be kept as low as possible.

There is Cing, whose actual name might be Qing, Jin or Elida. There is Myriam, who favors a black bandanna around her neck, and finally Caleb, who knows a dozen Mongolian swear words.

The girls were expecting me. They had seen my e-mail sent from the small town near the border, indicating that I would stay through Lunar New Year and wanted to get out of the capital. I wouldn't go so far as to say I was their only hope, but their options were slim. Most people had just a day or two between trains, enough to sneak out to Terlej National Park on the outskirts of the city, ride a tame horse for 45 minutes, sleep in a ger and make it back by noon the next day. But the girls wanted more, someone with more time and up for a bigger challenge. I was their man.

Bobby, co-owner of the guesthouse, knew that she had to move quickly, so she started pushing as I filled out the hostel's registration forms.

"You said that you might be interested in going to the countryside?" she said.

I demurred. I woke up that morning before dawn, and had entered the country less than 24 hours before. I wanted a hot shower and a catnap before making any serious decisions.

"There are two women here," she continued. "They want to leave tomorrow."

She explained the itinerary. We would leave Ulaanbaatar midday, and begin the two day journey to the White Lake. The first night would be spent in a ger along the way. At the lake there would be horses, a ger family and climbing. Then we would swing through the town of Tseterleg, stopping there to refuel and then make our way to Kharkhorum, the old capital for the final night. On the fifth day, we would be back in the capital.

White Lake, Tseterleg, Kharkhorum. These places meant nothing to me. I knew Genghis Khan, Soviet Colony and yurt. That's it. I needed a nap.

Bobby pushed further. "I would come along as a free translator. These people are my friends. We stay with nice families." She promised an "authentic experience," by celebrating the second most important Mongolian holiday in a traditional way.

Then she brought out the calendar and started crunching numbers. The fee for the driver, petrol and the car would be $340. An eye-popping figure for someone of limited means, but then Bobby started dividing. Split over five days and four people, the costs would be well within the budget range. She promised two-dollar accommodation and one dollar meals during the trek.

Everything sounded fine, and I realized that I wouldn't be allowed a respite without making a yes or no decision. I was on board.

We had three, but the numbers were based on four. I found him in the hostel's small pantry, which is stocked with complimentary strawberry tea, bread and condensed milk. His name was Caleb, and he didn't seem to know what he was doing. He might come on the trip, he might stay here in Ulaanbaatar. He possibly could be leaving for China in a couple of days, or the embassy could take another week to issue his visa. He teeter-tottered, and he did it very well. But he did know the area and offered to take me out to lunch and to scout out a couple of record shops.

By the time we finished our Cuban sandwiches, the hesitation in his voice had died down. We swung back to the hostel for a credit card, and went to Mongolbank for a withdrawal. Mid-afternoon I slapped several dozen turgik bills on Bobby's desk, which made it official. In under a day, I'd be headed into the wilderness with five people I didn't know, to places I knew nothing about.

The future was wide open.

I (Not Him) Have Been Expecting You

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — The sharp tug on my checkered sleep pants means it's time to wake up. My eyes open but nothing changes: It's pitch dark in the train cabin. Why did my bunkmate wake me up? I fumble for my glasses, and after locating them, peer out the window. The sky is still monochromatic, but I do see a smattering of white lights illuminating empty blocks. This must be Ulaanbaatar.

At the station I perform what is now routine: awkwardly gather my belongings and bang the rolling suitcase on the train as I exit. The station is long and narrow; there is only one set of tracks, and the sole platform is now full of scurrying passengers from the biggest arrival of the young day. I am conspicuous in my puffy green down jacket and internal frame pack. But I'm not the only foreigner in this crowd: I see, for the first time since Moscow, obviously Western European faces.

And where there are multiple people from developed countries in a developing one, there will be people trying to give them service. An aged man approaches me as I shuffle toward the main exit. His coat is worn at the shoulders and the hair on his uncovered head frizzles out like bolts of lightning.

"UB Guesthouse?" I ask him. He nods and I start walking in tandem.

I booked a room at this particular guesthouse on the advice of some westbound Siberian passengers. Through an online reservation service, I secured a bunk bed for the night of February 14. Fate intervened, I missed my direct bus to Ulaanbaatar and was forced to rely on a couple of beat up vans and the slow local train to make it to the city. This put me 12 hours behind my original schedule, so instead of spending Valentine's Day in a six-person bunkroom in the hostel, I was in a four-person bunkroom on wheels.

When I checked my e-mail just over the border in Sukhbaatar, I had a message with the subject line "Hi From Mongolia." It read as follows:

"Dear Johathan,

Thank you very much for your reservation through the Hostelworld.

We would like to know how would you like to come to Mongolia? By train or by air? Because we arrange a pick up service. Our charge is $10 from the airport, but free of charge from the train station. If you like, please send us your arrival information such as train and carriage number or flight number etc.,

With kind regards,
Bobby"

I responded by explaining my situation, and requesting a pickup the next morning. And here, apparently was my man. He spoke no English, but led me out the station to a vast parking lot. Taxis, vans and motorcycles were shoved into a tight space, arranged in positions that ensured more than half the cars had no chance of exit. As we made our way through the third row, a voice yelled my name.

"Jonathan? JONATHAN!" It came from a few cars over. A tall Mongolian with a western-style coat and a red beanie gestured when I turned my head. He then ran over and started berating the old man in Mongolian. "Come with me," he said, and dazed, I followed.

"That man isn't from the guesthouse," he said. "He tried to trick you. I am from UB Guesthouse." To prove it, he took a business card that showed the guesthouse logo identical to the one I saw online. The man seemed legit, and when we arrived at his late-model van, I could see a couple of white faces already inside. I let him take the rolling suitcase and toss on top of the other rucksacks.

The man who rescued me was Anbar. As we pulled out of the parking lot he explained in excited tones about how I'd almost wandered into a strange car. He grew more and more animated; I cracked a smile at my stupidity. I've been traveling on this lonely winter route for so long that I forgot about touts. With no tourists in Siberia or on the train, there's been no one to try to trick me. This encounter also happened before dawn, and I'm typically useless before noon.

So, Mongolia, you got me once. But now I've activated my anti-virus software, and I won't let anything slip through the firewall again.

Previously: "Straight Outta Ulaanbaatar"

We're Out of That

SUKHBAATAR, Mongolia — From the outside, the place is the spitting image of the bar from the "Dukes of Hazard": a wooden porch, window shutters with peeling paint and a big sign over the door. The parking lot is unpaved and full of small boulders. A weak gold light shines out from the two front windows.

But this isn't Nashville, it's Mongolia in winter. Rather than facing a room full of rednecks, I find this place deserted when I walk in the door at 7 p.m.

The restaurant is quite simple, but there has been some effort made to decorate. Pictures of the short Mongolian horses are on display along with a couple of small landscape paintings. The wall is painted salmon, and is lit up by mood lighting. The bathroom is a squatter, a porcelain hole with a hose that only produces a dribble on the side to flush it. But it is clean and the light inside works. Considering that the equivalent establishment in China would only have three walls and harsh fluorescent lighting, I'm impressed at the level sophistication.

The sole waitress leads me to a back room, a ten by ten foot cube connected to the restaurant's other small room. She brings a menu, which runs four pages and lists dishes in Mongolian, Russian and English. There are Russian specialties, including borscht and other beet dishes, several kinds of meat and even french fries. After much debating, I select a chicken and rice dish and call for the waitress, who is back at her desk, staring into space.

I point to my selection. She shakes her head. They don't have the chicken.

I slide my finger down a couple of spots to a beef stew. She shakes her head again. I'm beginning to see a pattern, so I ask the waitress what they do have in stock

"Noodles," she says, and moves her fingers around in a circle to show a bowl. "Noodles with meat."

"Anything else?"

She doesn't seem to understand the question. I go with the noodles and an order of bread, which the menu indicates comes with the meal.

Of course, beer was in stock and I ordered a bottle. I never used to drink alone. I was so against non-social drinking that I had a rule: If you're not going out, you're not having a drop of alcohol. But a glass of beer seems necessary after a long day in these far-out places, relaxing the mind and dulling the body's temperature receptors during the walk back to the hotel in the frigid outdoors. Being in the former Soviet Bloc is threatening to turn me into an alcoholic.

The waitress brings over a Tiger Beer, which is from Singapore. How the beer from this equitorially-based company made it all the way to the top of Mongolia I'm not sure, but the crisp taste is a reminder of tropical days past. It warms the body, and not just because it opens capillaries.

The food arrives all at once. It's a huge plate of noodles, thick and yellow, covering an entire oval-shaped serving plate. There are strips of mutton mixed in. Garlic and oil are the obvious seasonings, and they have been applied generously. It's good: hardy in the best sense of the word. I'm barely able to finish half the dish. I mourn the fact that the "doggy bag" probably has not yet come to Mongolia.

I also used to be intimidated by the prospect of eating alone - I certainly would never do it at an Olive Garden or TGI Friday's, or the high school cafeteria - but it's something I do now with being self-conscious. Tonight I am the sole diner, and I interact little with the waitress. Instead I fish around in my pack for Lonely Planet Mongolia, and start researching possible adventures. Eagle hunting in the Altay Mountains, camel trekking in the Gobi. It's all imagination, with no need to ruminate with a tired companion about the challenges faced during the trip here. Instead I'm able to just forget them and move onto a more smoothing place.

Eventually two Russian men interrupt the quiet and take a table on the opposite side of the tiny room. They demand menus and glasses of vodka. I demand the check. I spent 3,800 tugriks on the meal, which after struggling with a new conversion rate, I realize is about $3.50. At least the sole dish on the menu is not an expensive one.

Clusterfuck!

SUKHBAATAR, Mongolia — I love the word "clusterfuck."

It's a wonderful piece of slang, a precise word to describe the epic, swirling disasters that appear so often in the comedy of life.

My father adores the word, and uses it liberally: The mall in December. The post office on tax day. Pretty much every part of an airport. They're all clusterfucks. Coming out of my father's mouth, it's not a compliment.

Especially egregious situations - perhaps a five-mile backup on the Interstate during a rainstorm - require a modifier. In his lexicon, these are not merely clusterfucks, they are Mongolian Clusterfucks. Growing up I knew whenever the words "Mongolian Clusterfuck" were put together, it was time to shut up and give my father some room to vent: we were in a bit of mess.

Until this very moment, I never thought about why the word "Monoglian" was used to emphasize the worst type of clusterfuck. Now, after only two hours in the country, I realize that the slang-coiners were dead on this time.

I needed a train ticket to the capital city, Ulaanbaatar. The crowded van I took from the border dropped me and my rolling suitcase right in front of the gray, Social-Realist train station. I rolled into the waiting room, a box filled with two rows of decaying plastic seats and an ugly shade of lime green paint peeling off the walls. It took much of my concentration to stay awake. I'd been traveling for 12 hours, difficult ones punctuated by yelling at various customs officers and bank tellers.

I focused on the occupants of the room. They're weren't many, and the few people were huddled in the corners, guarding their bags. The faces here are sadder and thinner than the faces I had seen over the border in Buryata. These people, in their tattered clothes, with their dust-covered possessions, wear their poverty as an outer layer. Yet they also seemed stoic, as if showing that years and years of abuse and hard conditions wouldn't crush their will to go on.

A small movement broke the peace. A young staff member removed a sign that was next to one of the ticket windows; pandemonium ensued. Every person in the station went toward that window at a full sprint - mothers grabbed their kids and forced them to lunge, an old man abandoned his bag of dirty vegetables - and they formed a massive huddle. People from the outside streamed into the station, and soon a dozen became nearly a 100.

Being mostly British, I made a move toward a shape to the right of the window that somewhat resembled a line. A uniformed train employee arrived and an attempted to make the line mandatory, with little success.

It took 15 minutes to get in front of that window. I was next in line three times, but each time I went to make that final step a skinny Mongolian wiggled his way around me. The fourth time I felt someone behind me attempting the same maneuver, but I'd had enough. I threw a right elbow out and blocked the deviant. Then I turned around to discover that I'd just hit a young mother in the side of the cheek, and come within a foot of giving her young son brain damage. But after fighting through that sea of humanity, I didn't feel guilty. I bought my ticket, one first-class upper berth, and ran out of the station.

It was an awful, awful time; the worst ticket buying experience ever. This is why a really bad clusterfuck is called a Mongolian Clusterfuck.

The Exile

KYAKHTA, Russia – On the road out of Russia, I passed only a single vehicle: an aging brown tank driving on a dirt road parallel to the main highway. As my rudimentary taxi got closer, two heads popped out. They wore the Russian army uniform, had shaven heads and couldn't have been older than 19. The tank operators had to stop because their mode of transport got completely ensconced in mud. The tank moved feebly forward and backward, but as my car drove into the distance it wasn't going much of anywhere.

That tank neatly represents what I will take away from two weeks in the Russian Federation. Russia is a powerful country, one that is becoming even more powerful with surging energy commodity prices and new mineral discoveries in remote areas. It is an important actor in global geopolitics, one that can still make waves in international affairs. But I'm not sure that the person driving this heavily armored tank is qualified for the job. Instead this lumbering giant might just be piloted by a scrawny, inexperienced teenager.

I didn't see Russia; I saw Russias. On the streets of Moscow I peered in restaurants where oligarchs and their progeny snarf down $100 mayonnaise-covered salads and saw one country. I saw that place again in the Sony store, where everything costs twice the price in the United States and there were two salespeople for every customer. To dodge the cold, I wandered through the GUM Department Store. Once a few mostly-empty Communist shops, the turn-of-the-century structure has been renovated and subdivided into dozens of fancy boutiques. This is the fanciest mall I have ever been to, anywhere on the planet, and inside the shoppers were privileged, mega-spenders with $2,000 clutches and matching designer boots.

Then there is the Other Russia, the one I saw mostly on transport. It was in van taxis, long-distance buses, on the subway and that epic train ride I came elbow-to-elbow with those not doing so well. The ones with cheap Chinese T-shirts and faded designs, carrying old backpacks back and forth from a block flat in a small suburb. They live lives without flash or glamor, eating out infrequently and . Dying early from poisonous liquor and poor working conditions. Subsiding on a pension that wouldn't be adequate in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Then there are the have-somes, the Sergeis and Vasilys that are doing O.K. Things are better than 1998, when the currency collapsed and the International Monetary Fund forced economy policy down Yestlin's throat like he was in charge of Sierra Leone. Their lot's improving, but life is still a slog.

These Russias should be in open conflict, with daily protests as the poor try to institute the Orange Revolution on a massive scale and those with a stake in the current system fight back with their superior resources. Instead, people from all walks of life accept Vladimir Putin as the driver of the country. He and his cronies get to decide where to point the tank, at defiant ex-Soviet Republics and democratic elements in the West.

I personally believe that the people with grapes should take them up with the driver. Make him pass a more difficult test before renewing his license. Try someone else at the wheel for a while.

But I'm no longer in the car, I just came for a test spin. I couldn't buy Russian. For all the friendly people I met here, meals I shared and wonderful literature and art I exposed to, I could never live here. The Russian deposition is too solemn for my extroverted personality. The skies are too gray and too cold someone who loves the beach. The quality of life is shit. It's a police state, somewhere where I had to worry about being written up for small infractions by an underpaid man in uniform. Most services are corrupt, so if I got in real trouble I wouldn't know where to go.

Russia is lurching in three directions. It may explode or prosper; I'm not sure. After spending some time here, it's no longer a black spot on the map. I'll be closely monitoring how things develop here – from a safe distance.

Previously: "Do Svidaniya"