A Look Back: Mongolia

Maybe it’s the sticky weather that has triggered it, but lately I’ve been daydreaming about Mongolia. It’s been almost a year since we ventured to my favorite country, and sometimes I wish we had chosen to go back for our vacation this year.

Traveling is thrilling. Traveling reminds you of things that you had previously forgotten the importance of. Like your assurance in mankind, the truly wonderful feeling you get from a genuine smile from a stranger, and the way fresh fruit is really supposed to taste. This is why I keep going back for more.

In the case of Mongolia, these feelings intensified. Never in my life have I been confronted with the kind of emotions that I had while traveling for 7 days on the outskirts of the Gobi Desert. Part of the reason for this is that I was disconnected from the world. With no technology, no internet or cell phone, I was completely left to the raw experiences that one has when dealing with their present surroundings. It’s ironic that when I took time away from apparatuses that connect me to friends and family, I found myself more connected to humanity.

Mongolia opens your eyes to the sheer magnitude of our planet. Driving hours and hours on end without seeing a single man-made structure is overwhelming. I felt a lot of things. Sometimes I felt helpless, that if something were to happen, we would be stranded. Sometimes, despite the vast expanse, I felt claustrophobic. Sometimes I felt serenity in the rocks, hills, meadow grasses, wild horses and sunsets around me. It’s incredibly soothing not to rest your eyes on any geometric structures like a building or another car.

The way your eyes roll over the fluid landscape is the way my mind felt the majority of the time. The most striking feeling though, was just how small I felt. Perhaps one might have this feeling when in a crowd of millions, or when atop Mt. Everest, or sailing the seas on a sailboat built for one. It’s a feeling that everyone should experience at least once in their life. Knowing how minuscule of a role you play in the scheme of things might seem depressing, but not to me. I can only describe it as refreshing. When you come to terms with your role on the planet, things seem simpler. You feel part of it, part of it all.

It reminds me of a Buddhist concept my high school history teacher (one of my role models), introduced to us: you are everything, and everything is you. Nothing is everything, and everything is nothing. Pretty deep stuff for day to day life, but when picnicking on the dry soil of a high desert, I found happiness in this. I felt truth in this.

Mongolia is a place I will always go back to, whether for real or in my mind. It’s raw terrain, it’s thick skinned people and it’s ability to teach us all about ourselves beckons me to re-live my experiences there.