Day 1 in Mongolia: an endless steppe, a touch of anxiety, and really hot water

The steppe was endless. Not a single tree, road, or building marred the sprawling blanket of green. I took in a deep breath at the sight, genuinely astounded to see this much undeveloped land in person. As the plane approached the airport, dirt roads dotted sparsely with yurts came into view. The transition accelerated on the drive to Ulaanbaatar, the capital city, as grass turned to concrete.

At a traffic-induced standstill, I looked out the window at a faded red building labeled “Power Plant # 3” and watched it lazily puff a gray plume of smoke into the sky. The haze settled over the city’s odd mélange of buildings: low-rise buildings in varying shades of beige, Chinese-style pavilions, glitzy glass skyscrapers, and Soviet-era constructs marked with chipped white columns and Cyrillic writing.

After checking into the hostel, I set out in search of food. I picked a Mongolian barbecue restaurant, happy to step out of the hot Ulaanbaatar air. Unsure if I needed to wait to be seated by the server or if I should sit down at an open table, I instead did nothing and hovered awkwardly by the door. After a few futile attempts to make eye contact with the server, I picked a table and sat down. The menu, thankfully, presented a photo of each dish. I decided to ease myself into Mongolia cuisine, skipping over kneecap soup and mutton tongue salad, instead opting for a pedestrian bowl of potato salad and lamb.

Sensing a tinge of dehydration, I attempted to ask the server for water. But I, not speaking any Mongolian, could only make the motion of holding a cup to my lips and assumed that she would detect that my imaginary cup was filled with ice cold water. I was mistaken – she returned with a glass of boiling water. Not exactly what I was hoping for as I was actively sweating at the table. I also couldn’t quite think of any situation in which someone would want boiling water on a hot summer day.

While waiting for food and willing my water to drop 100 degrees, a man came forward and pointed at the chair across from me. I smiled and nodded, assuming he would take it to another table. Instead, he plopped down in front of me. With no way to communicate, we just smiled at each other like happy fools and ate our respective Mongolian meats together at the table.

As I sat at the table after the meal, I suddenly became hyperaware of my complete freedom and solitude. I realized it less so in the ‘yippee’ way and more so in the ‘oh no, what am I supposed to do with myself’ way. Unlike every other day of my life, I had no list to check off, no emails to write, no laundry to be done. Admittedly, it scared me a little.

So I started walking and took notes of things that I saw. Things that were different from home, things that were the same. A monk in a cherry red robe, emerging from the bank.

A bride in a Cinderella-sized wedding gown posing on the stairs of the Parliament building. A young couple holding hands on a park bench. Two elder men crouched on the sidewalk, throwing pebbles onto a chess board in a game that I did not know. A boy with a spiderman hat on his bike, wobbling as he tried to follow a line on the sidewalk. As I walked, the solitude became less heavy.