In Mongolia, My Yurt is Your Yurt
Travel Blog • Joanna Kakissis • 09.25.08 | 11:50 AM ET
As 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).
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