In Mongolia, My Yurt is Your Yurt

Travel Blog  •  Joanna Kakissis  •  09.25.08 | 11:50 AM ET

imageAs a traveler, Tim Wu never liked communing with the locals—or, rather, the contrived experience of tourists “living” local culture. “The problem is that most events billed as a chance to ‘experience indigenous culture’ tend to range from the merely uncomfortable to the downright nauseating,” he writes in the latest installment of Slate’s Well-Traveled series.

But his cynicism is broken in the rugged Mongolian countryside. Wu sees a yurt (or “ger”) “as part of a landscape painting, not something you might interact with”—until he stops at one himself.

He’s taken in as a guest and plied with distilled horse milk liquor until he’s happily drunk and given free rein of the horses.

“Every settlement was like a friend’s summer home,” Wu writes. “Within limits, you can drink, hang out, milk goats, go hunting or hiking, and maybe buy an animal and kill it for food (more on that later in the week).”

Photo by jrubinic  via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Tags: Asia, Mongolia

Joanna Kakissis's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among other publications. A contributor to the World Hum blog, she's currently a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder.


1 Comment for In Mongolia, My Yurt is Your Yurt

MongolMan 09.25.08 | 10:01 PM ET

Yeah. There is no country and people like my Mongolia! I do welcome each and everyone of you…

Mr.T

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