Mongolia Road | Heading to a Nomadic Country

Mongolia Road | Heading to a Nomadic Country

Landlocked between the largest and most populated countries in the world, Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west lies Mongolia, an intriguing place where past and present seem to co-exist. While Ulan Bator is as modern as a capital can be, half an hour drive away from it, I feel as if I have entered a different era. Dominating the vast, empty landscape where I am the only thing separating the earth and the sky are nomads on horseback herding livestocks or working around their gers, a form of portable housing in Mongolia.

Mongolia, with 2.7 millions, is the least populated country in the world where one person occupies an entire 1.3 square km. The inhabitants of this rugged terrain have to overcome harsh weather up to 40 Celsius in the summer and -40 in the winter. As I look at the country today, I can not fathom how it was possible that it once ruled over the largest land empire in the world history, a feast never achieved before and repeated after. At its zenith, the Mongol empire covered a huge territory from Russia to India and from China to Hungary.

My traveling in the last few years focused mainly in Europe, and I noticed a common theme in my research: how big, powerful one country and its empire was: the Roman empire, then the colonies of the Great Britain and France, Greater Serbia, Greater Azerbaijan, Greater Armenia, the discovery journey of the Scandinavian Vikings and Christopher Columbus, the romanticized conquest of Napoleon and Alexander the Great. In term of sheer strength and the the size of the acquired territory, these can not surpass the empire carved out by Mongolia’s most recognized name, Chinggis Khan.