Being on the road has always been the most exciting part of traveling for me. Drinking beers on the overnight train to Surat Thani, daydreaming in the bus to Laos and tanning on the boat back to Bali. It eases my mind and allows me to think of things that I normally feel too busy for. The 10-hour drive on the first day of our adventure was supposed to be a complete nightmare - that's what I've heard - but instead it was amazing. The van was a real muscle machine and drove us over bumpy pieces of land, rocks and mountains. It was a Russian van without electricity, because electricity increased the chance of defects during our trip. We were going to drive from Central Mongolia all the way to the Gobi Desert and then back up north to Karakorum and on the way there would only be a couple of small cities where we would be able to fix the car. That means that most of the time we would be in the middle of nowhere, looking out over big wide landscapes with no one to be found. Because of this we also took food with us, which the interpreter would prepare for us. Every now and then we'd stop in front of a small market square, where vendors would have a dead sheep or goat in the back of their open trunk, and buy a piece of juicy mutton leg.
The first night of our trip we spent in a ger surrounded by goats. Most of them alive, some dead and some eaten; their skin being all that was left of them. It's customary in Mongolia to leave something that is dead out in the open. And even though it was strange in the beginning and to us it would be something that is disrespectful, it is in fact the opposite. Mongolians respect the earth in a way I haven't seen anyone else do and they really try their best not to interrupt te cycle of life. They don't wash anything in the rivers, because they believe that it's important for the river to be able to clean itself, and therefore they shouldn't pollute it. They hardly plant any trees and plants, because the earth shouldn't be destroyed. And they believe something that I wish would become a more common belief: that the earth belongs to no one, and so it belongs to everyone. You can't buy any land on the countryside, but you are free to go wherever and whenever you please, because no money is equivalent to the true freedom that Mongolians have. Their lifestyle is difficult, mostly for a girl like me that grew up in a country that we'd say is wealthier, but they are rich in a way that may actually be more fulfilling and sustainable than what I am used to. When my father asked a Mongolian girl how you could see whether someone is rich or not, she answered that you can't. They may have more animals, but they only buy as much food as they need and they don't wear expensive clothes. The nomadic lifestyle allows you to only have so many possessions, because every time you move you need to take those with you. And so they end up owning things, instead of things owning them.
And it made sense to me, because I always say that I don't need more than what fits in my bags because eventually I will leave for another country again and I will leave everything else behind. But even though I agreed with the lifestyle, I couldn't adapt so easily. Not being able to shower after a day of sweating and being touched by animals, eating mutton twice a day and sleeping on the ground was hard for me. And all the flies that were circling around my head were just annoying, but the mosquitoes made my legs swell and very soon I understood that these were the ones I was allergic to. But the landscape was pretty - valleys filled with purple flowers, the highest cliffs I've ever seen made out of red rocks - and the nights were beautiful, the black sky filled with millions of stars and the thought of the fact that our tent could at any time be surrounded by wolves made me feel like a little child; uncomfortable but excited. And that's what I'd say those days were like. Uncomfortable, but exciting, and it filled me with expectations of what was yet to come. And what's more exciting than living like a nomad, if being on the road is the most exciting part of traveling?
