Diversity thrives in Mongolia

A traveling student finds vibrant culture amid the Asian country's stark landscape

MONGOLIA -- Editor's note: Greg Randolph, a former Our Lives columnist for The News & Observer, has just finished a "gap year" to explore the world between graduating from Raleigh's Broughton High School and starting as a Morehead-Cain Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill. This column is from his travels.

By Greg Randolph

Bright, ruddy mud and rust clung to the baby blue truck, and its still-cushiony seats were ripped open as if a Rottweiler had feasted on the vinyl. The cargo load seemed to soar and slump at the same time, the height of three men with a drooping, bulging back end. This was our chariot, the machine in which we would face the short Mongolian night on dirt roads set in vast, gradual valleys.

We had driven 12 hours straight, until 3 a.m., when Toroo, the chariot's intrepid captain, needed a snooze. I jumped down from the truck and lay on scorched earth, shivering beneath four hearty layers on this June morning.

I wanted to try a Buddhist meditation technique I'd just read about -- stargazing. Twenty minutes later, when Toroo called me back into the truck, I had witnessed at least 10 shooting stars grazing the space above. Not miniature ones -- brilliant, cross-the-sky, flash-of-light, heart-stirring ones. The night had never been so clear to both eyes and mind, and I knew I was the full 12 hours removed from the modern world.

When I awoke, bumping in a way that demands a cushioned ceiling, our drive had neared its conclusion. The land had grown healthier, with tiny sprouts of infant green, the rains' first validation. Dotted with starchy white gers (the large round tents that Russians called yurts) and ovoo -- spiritually charged rock mounds that reach into Mongolia's shamanist roots -- the landscape felt utterly timeless. This was to be my home for the next five weeks.

I realized in that moment that Mongolia must be the most diverse country in the world. The country in which I'd arrived three weeks earlier didn't soothe with subtle landscapes of simple, elegant beauty. In the countryside, people live much the same way they lived thousands of years ago. But in Ulaanbaatar, the rapidly expanding capital where nearly half of Mongolia's 3 million people live, modernity cries out like an anthem.

Lexuses, Wi-Fi cafes and fashionistas pattern the congested streets. Department stores selling plasma TVs and designer jeans make up the popular weekend outing, and the markets sell avocados shipped in from Mexico. One night a friend dragged me to the opening of a new nightclub in "UB" (as some affectionately call the city). Drowned in electric neon, inspired techno music and fake fog, I found myself wondering what Genghis Khan would have thought of his nation's unbridled newness.

Religious tolerance

Mongolia isn't only diverse in its spectrum of lifestyles. The Mongol Empire's legacy of religious tolerance seems to play out within nuclear families: a Buddhist mom, a Muslim dad, a Christian son. A Mongolian girl I befriended professed to be Baha'i. The capital is flooded with the steeples of Catholic sanctuaries, the cupolas of Russian Orthodox churches, the whitewashed stupas outside Buddhist monasteries. The ancient beauty of shamanism is undergoing a strong revival, too. This is their history: In the 12th century, the Mongol court hosted religious debates, inviting Tibetans, Persians and Europeans to mind-battle.

Such diversity doesn't come without confusion or tension. The collisions of so many worlds are seen at the margins, in the ger districts of Ulaanbaatar for example. Herders fleeing Mongolia's harshest climates such as the Gobi Desert set up their homes and maintain small herds while some family members work in the city. From above, the ger districts are a dirty white inner tube insulating Ulaanbaatar's high-rises, and on their bumpy, half-paved roads horsemen still drive tiny, chattering groups of sheep.