It’s hard for me to set this journey to music. Usually, movement evokes an immediate sound in my mind, yet after days in this country, I still can’t hear it clearly. At first I gravitate toward the pentatonic scale, but it sounds clichéd—this country is not the East of my subconscious. From the airplane I glimpse hundreds of kilometers of inhospitable land; I’ve never seen such vast expanses without humans. I spent so many nights of my childhood awake playing Age of Empires, choosing the Mongols over and over again to build my empire. I could never have predicted that I would one day be walking this path, stirring, body and flesh in one of the last virgin steppe ecosystems of this planet.
Capital Ulaanbaatar is a dreadful city marked by a deep disconnection between the urban and its natural context. At least this is my first impression, it seems a result of rushed development without any kind of regulation. It reminds me of Nairobi, Maputo, or Poblacion in Manila, places like labyrinths of incomprehensible logic. On the outskirts, there are remnants of Soviet influence in dilapidated block housing. These buildings starkly contrast with the glass and metal towers that flood the center like an infection. The traffic is considered by many to be the worst in the world, and maybe rightly so: it took me four and a half hours to cover the 40 km from the airport to the city center.
I arrive with the days of Naadam, a surreal journey into ancient Mongol culture. The entire country halts for these games, which begin with the procession of nine white horsehair banners from the Parliament Palace to the stadium for the opening ceremony, a display of riders, dancers, archers, and other bearers of their most ancestral traditions. We are not participants; we are spectators. It’s clear it belongs to the locals and only the locals can be part of it, but we can watch and it’s fascinating. I stand in the stadium amazed yet I don't feel like an intruder. The colors are explosive. The music is solemn, almost military, defined by brass winds and their two-stringed horsehead fiddles. The sound moves me, but I cannot claim it, there is a sharp sense of privilege around it. This is how their fantasy sounds, though it’s not how I hear it.
I leave behind the city’s intense rumble in search of the land’s heart. Our driver, Tögöldör (Төгөлдөр), sings in Mongolian to stay awake on the boundless roads; songs about their lands and its lakes, which are as scarce as water in general in this continental country surrounded by mountains that block moist clouds. I have read so much about this place that I feel a film unfolding before my eyes as I move forward into the vastness of the steppe.
The roads are barely marked, splitting into dozens of paths across the grasslands stretching infinitely, unbroken by trees. Like the garden of forking paths, I joke. The landscape is both soothing and desolate, and I think of some Ravel. A piano sonatina slowly arises. I plug in my headphones and feel it sliding across this abyssal, eternal landscape. No—Ravel is too far away.
With the Mongols, I share a timeless fascination with Genghis Khan. He is everywhere; it makes sense. He was the man who united the Mongol tribes and built the greatest, most powerful empire the Earth has known. I always picture this man alongside horses running wild across the prairies, I didn’t know why until now. This sacred animal is central to nomadic life, living in perfect harmony with the Mongols, who decorate their saddles with symbols like the swastika, lotus flowers, or dharma wheels to protect and bring good fortune. The landscape bestows upon me herds of horses running down the mountains through green fields and across rivers, they evoke so many movie scenes of my childhood, I lose all sense of where I am.
We eat yak, goat and lamb meat constantly, every day, with cheeses of complex flavors and scarce vegetables. At night we drink vodka, in the morning fermented mare’s milk, and tea throughout the day. We offer a bit of each to the four winds in gratitude. Mongolia has been a Buddhist nation for over five hundred years, despite the horrific massacre of monks carried out by Stalin in the 1930s. I visit temples deep in the mountains in my search for a theme but I hear only the wind—meditation is the sound of nothingness.
The countryside dwellings are simple yurts with no windows, carpeted and with walls decorated with saddlebags and sometimes an image or a painting. An opening at the top lets in the light and releases the smoke produced by a central stove. The space is arranged in a circle: the women’s side is to the right of the door, for cooking and chores; the men’s, for rest, to the left. Women work inside, men outside. I visit a couple and their four children. He looks about 65 but is barely 40, his skin toughened by sun and wind, a common sight in a country where life expectancy hovers around 60 due to a monotonous, meat- and fat-heavy diet. The shy girls smile and offer me a small fried pastry and pungent mare’s milk. I accept, though I’d rather not; in Mongolia it’s deeply rude to refuse an offer. For all its novelty, life arranges itself much as it does for us: beds to sleep in, meals with family, dishes to wash, and songs to entertain.
One day, on a long journey, I encounter a beautiful young Mongolian near a sacred stone. We gaze at each other for a long time, he shows a gritty innocence. I tend to look away out of shame, he nevertheless holds the gaze, unfazed, with a slight smile. I approach and ask his name in Mongolian—one of the few phrases I’ve learned. I can’t repeat what he says but his voice is so soft, his presence so deep. Before I leave, I take him a photo and show it to him—there’s a sparkle in his eyes from our encounter. We share a silence, and I think to myself that we are not so different after all.
I arrive at the Gobi Desert after a ten-hour journey where the green rolling steppe gives way to a dry, rocky plain, streaked with reddish mountain ranges. It reminds me of La Rioja in Argentina—a plateau overlooking an infinite flatland, with no yurts in sight. Again, the vertigo of the incognoscible. Sometimes I think God used copy and paste when creating the world, always finding familiar places in exotic lands. Here, a hundred years ago, the first dinosaur egg was discovered, during an expedition led by American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews—the inspiration for Indiana Jones. I think, amusingly, of John Williams. But his music feels like a comedy and doesn’t fit. I’ll keep searching.
I realize how limited my knowledge of Eastern music is. Beyond some pentatonic motifs, I ignore the depth of these local sounds. I always joke that I know about everything, but it’s not true. I’m just too curious. I collect facts, I can talk about anything—but though real knowledge is something else, only a few ever notice. In any case, I do believe that knowledge is acquired in a time shaped by the chance encounters of books and travels. The only rhythm coursing through me now is the fatal rattling of the Russian truck making its way through the sea of rocks and sand. My spine is begging for rest. This country is a journey of becoming, more than a spectacle—reflections from other worlds in order to return to your inner self, as always. I’m becoming more aware of that.
I’ve been riding in this Russian truck for days and suddenly it strikes me. Russia is just around the corner. My mind drifts back to the desert, to the image of the dry sea receding as the Bombardier lifts me into the air on my flight back to the capital. I think of the camels’ gait. I don’t know why, but I begin to hear a distant sound, one of my favorite piano concerti. It feels like this concerto was written for this land, it carries the complexity and grandeur of the landscapes that surround me. My favorite composer, Prokofiev. He is not far. Not even Borodin. Just the magnificent Prokofiev.
I return to Ulaanbaatar hoping to rest. The opposite happens. I find an urban rhythm I particularly enjoy. The contrast with the desert is fascinating. There’s humidity in the air, the city looks particularly beautiful—I don’t understand what has changed. Maybe it’s just that I know these streets now, or perhaps I am thrilled by new connections. I have no obligations. I walk aimlessly while hundreds of little motorbikes swerve dangerously around me. I connect with locals using the phrases I’ve learned, I feel like Alice with the mad hatter, negotiating jokes while I take the streets, everyone smiles at me. I run back to the hotel, soaking wet under heavy rain, while I listen to Concerto No. 3—the sound of Mongolia, my sound of Mongolia—Martha Argerich’s fingers tracing the stone cliffs that embraced me days ago. I don’t know why, this time I don’t want to leave, my body asks me to stay, I don’t want this feeling to end. How can I keep it, I wonder, as I settle into a windowless seat 18A on flight CA724 out of the country. One day, I’ll return. Until then, I’ll have Martha’s Prokofiev to come back whenever I need.
