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.