Mongolia

We really did not know what to expect when we went to Mongolia. We thought the landscapes would be beautiful (they were nice), but we did not know about the star attraction: the people and culture. It is hard to sum up anything in few stupid blog entries, but I will write a few ideas.

Mongolia is one of the least populated countries on earth dominated by the nomadic people and lifestyle. In a modern era, it is hard to imagine packing up all of your belongings and moving every three months, but people do it here in less than a couple of hours. They live in gers, round huts with stoves in the middle, that do a remarkable job of keeping people warm in the brutal winters here.

The landscape is so vast and open it is hard to describe. Everywhere you look there are great plains filled with thousands of animals and a few people. The people are so welcoming and hardy they seem like they are from a long past world.

Even though the people are so different, they are so similar. They laugh a lot, they love their children, and they work and work and work.

Being a cheap guy, we went for a cheap tour. This meant we traveled with a really nice French family and stayed in gers that nomads had set up to host tourist. They were not fancy resorts or even resort gers. They were very basic but they had the one thing that the other options lacked: an option to spend time with families and get to know about the real life of these wonderful people.

Overall a very interesting trip.