Once Upon A Time In Mongolia

Myth and reality collide on a trek across the taiga

- Erin Craig

Reality is messy, and people instinctively try to shape it into recognisable storylines. The travel narrative for Mongolia usually involves the “mysterious,” highly photogenic Tsaatan people, who live in a fairy-tale forest where the Mongolian border leaps north to kiss Siberia. According to this mythology, this lost tribe of nomadic reindeer herders remains untainted by the modern world, and only the brave can hope to discover them in their native wilderness.

Cue the eye roll. A brief trawl through Instagram quickly reveals that you don’t have to be exceptionally tough to visit the Tsaatan. Anyone with enough time on her hands can do it.

Me, for example. I hadn’t intended to take this trip—I was disenchanted with the hype. You want remote and fantastical? Mongolia has more than 15,00,000 square kilometres of roadless Nowhere, complete with nomads, camels, and (depending on how far your credulity stretches) a Mongolian death worm, which lives in the Gobi desert. How had one overspun narrative become the country’s go-to adventure?

On the other hand, I’d just spent a year chasing stories as a freelance writer in Mongolia’s only major city. Ulaanbaatar is the coldest capital on Earth and suffocates in coal dust and construction debris. Eventually my congestion outweighed my cynicism. When my friend Anudari suggested the taiga as the destination of a lifetime, I jumped in her car, no questions asked.