The Universal Migrator

From the very first moment that I saw “The Frau”, as I came to call her, I began to doubt the wisdom of my choice of hostel. I noticed her standing on the platform as our train slowly rolled to a stop at the Ulaanbaatar train station in Mongolia. Her plain face held an expression that combined empty mindedness with confusion as she looked from side to side through a pair of round, crooked eyeglasses.

She held a white sign with the name “Jones” written in a sloppy hand across the front at a slant. I might not have seen her but for the obvious fact that Jones is my last name. How many Joneses could there possibly be on the Trans-Mongolian railway coming from Beijing anyway? It was merely the beginning of what would turn out to be a few very strange days spent as a guest of the Oneway Guesthouse in the village of Jarmag (pronounced “yarmog”), outside the capital city of Ulaanbaatar.

When traveling, we are often forced to make decisions without really knowing what it is we’re getting ourselves into. Booking a hostel in advance can be a very practical thing to do. However, if you’re traveling somewhere for the first time, it can be difficult to decide which hostel might be the best place to stay.

Are the facilities really as described on the internet? Is it located where I’ll have easy access to get where I need to go? How clean are the toilets and showers? These are just some of the questions that may pass through a traveler’s mind when booking a hostel. This is especially true if you don’t have much experience with low-budget traveling. Veterans of traveling on the cheap tend not to be overly concerned about what condition the hostel might be in once they arrive. They’ve usually learned an important rule for being a successful traveler: Trust your instincts.

Any number of things can go horribly wrong while traveling. Where you decide to stay can play a very important role in the overall experience of your trip. That being said, it is equally important to keep an open mind when dealing with unknown environments, and not to have too many expectations about what you’ll find once you get there. Yes, maybe the hostel isn’t quite how you had imagined it. Maybe the food is horrible, or maybe you’ve found yourself on the opposite side of the city from where you were hoping to be. If this should happen to you, rather than becoming overly frustrated or upset, I would recommend that you ask yourself the question, “What valuable experiences might I gain from the situation in which I now find myself?”

My stay at the Oneway Guesthouse is a perfect example of how asking this question can change an experience. The Frau was a German immigrant who had come to Mongolia looking for fresh opportunities. She married a Mongolian man and started a guesthouse with him by erecting several nomadic tents on the land surrounding their own family home. In addition to running the business, they raised their two small boys and lived out their day to day lives at the guesthouse. Everything seemed to be contrary to what I had thought the hostel would be like. The food was far from appetizing, and I was disappointed with the continuing aloofness of our hosts. Yet what I found to be most frustrating was the fact that this hostel was’t even located in Ulaanbaatar, as I had been led to believe, but rather some 30 minutes away in Jarmag.

Nearly a shantytown, Jarmag is a community that developed on the outskirts of the capital as people from the countryside gave up their semi-nomadic lifestyle with the hope of finding greater opportunities for a better future near the city. As we first drove into the village, I felt like I was entering a scene from a “Save The Children” commercial, expecting Sally Struthers to pop out from around every corner to make me feel guilty about my privileged life. Coincidentally, the hostel we would later move to in Ulaanbaatar was situated right next to the Save The Children headquarters in Mongolia. It was at that point that I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

Jarmag sits on the opposite side of the Tuul River Valley from Ulaanbaatar, separated both by the river and by a large expanse of grass populated with wandering sheep and cattle. Vast coal burning power plants also sit in this no man’s land, constantly billowing clouds of smoke that spread out over the city and surrounding valley. After assessing the lay of the land, my traveling companion and I decided that our first priority was to find another hostel in the heart of Ulaanbaatar as soon as possible.

However, before we could commence with our relocation plans, we became trapped in the village by the dramatic arrival of an immense thunderstorm. With great flashes of lightning and booming thunder, the dark clouds came rolling over the hills and opened up with a downpour that spread out across the entire valley. It was during this awesome spectacle that I began to see how finding ourselves isolated in Jarmag could be a blessing rather than an inconvenience.

As I stood leaning against the fence of the Oneway Guesthouse, drenched in rain, I gazed out across the river valley toward Ulaanbaatar. I realized that I had just come from the large city of Beijing. Why was I in such a rush to spend yet more time in another city? Here in Jarmag I had the chance to experience an environment and a community that most travelers get only a brief glimpse of while on their way toward the sites that everyone comes to see when they visit Mongolia. I wasn’t witnessing the idyllic scenes of nomadic life as a family dressed in traditional clothing tended to their flock from the backs of horses. This was a community that would never be depicted on a postcard. No tourist passing by in their hired Jeep would call out to their driver, “Stop here, I simply must take some photos of this beautiful place!” This was not the Mongolia of my imagination. It was a reality I couldn’t have imagined.

Even though it had at first seemed a mistake to stay at the Oneway Guesthouse, in the end I embraced the fact that it was exactly the kind of experience I had needed during my first few days in Mongolia. It gave me a lasting impression and feeling about what it means to be in Mongolia, and helped to form the fond image of it that I still hold today. I learned to trust my instincts, and in so doing, how to become a more successful traveler by keeping an open mind about what I might find on the road set before me.

I might try to describe in detail all the things I discovered about Mongolia while I was a traveler in its lands, yet I don’t want to tempt your wanderlust to be satisfied only with stories of my adventures. Instead I would invite you to set out upon the world on your own adventures and to experience all that it has to offer. So for now I’ll leave you with the most important piece of advice I could give:

When planning a trip, whether you’re new to the world of adventure or an experienced traveler, trust your instincts and keep an open mind, and you’ll be sure to make the most of whatever surprises might come your way.

Filed by Chris 大斌 at 10:46 pm under MatadorU, Mongolia, Reflections, World Wanderings