Lesson 1: There is both a microbus schedule, and a crumbling shelter that marks the pick up spot for a van that takes townspeople between the town and the capital. Ignore both. Instead, listen to your host when she tells you,”Don’t bother with the microbus stop, go straight to the driver’s house. And [laughing], 8 […]

I. In the openness of the train station the sound of my rolling luggage disappears into the muted sound of other passengers hurrying to board with their unwieldy belongings. We are making our way down the Beijing Railway platform and my companion is speaking, but that too dissolves into the intangible as I glimpse the […]

Introductions Ulaanbaatar is not a quiet city. It is loud. It is impatient. The clamor of development and collapse gnash relentlessly at your senses. Car horns bray the displeasure of their drivers. You are confronted by the din of construction, the acrid smell of newly layed asphalt, and the reflection of post-socialism in the glossy […]