My experience of Mongolia was defined by the region of Bazriin Chuulu where the Land Art artworks were created and the people i met there. Mongolians are happy go lucky and so my favorite and most informative experiences happened by accident. For instance, one day after being lost in the desert for several hours, roaming the landscape in Mr. Tsegmid Puntsag’s SUV, we came upon a site which has a tiny well of holy water. That day i also  learnt  about Lama Zavaa Damdin who was a Gobi Buddhist scholar and a hermit during the socialist purges. Tsegmid also pointed out the …

I think one of the first things that struck us when we arrived at the Ger Camp in the Gobi was that it was green! I think we were all mislead by the word desert, even though this is the north end, we did not anticipate so much green. It is not grass exactly, more like wild scrub brush that survives in the red sandy soil. Many of the plants smelled of sage or marjoram and so some areas were very pungent. We were told that there had been quite a bit of rain this season, which caused the plants …

We arrived at our camp in the Gobi desert after a very long, bumpy, dusty ride on an old bus. I did not realize that the seat belts were used to keep you in your seat because the huge potholes every few meters will make you hit the ceiling! This was 10 hours on a dirt track, where in typical Mongolian fashion, the driver got lost many times. At one point we stopped a man herding camels from a motorbike, gave him a cigarette in exchange for some directions. On the way i also saw many wild horses, eagles (spotted …