DALANZADGAD, Mongolia — It was lunchtime on the steppe in Mongolia, the most
sparsely populated country on Earth. So when our driver spotted a lone white
yurt in the distance, we stopped for a jug of hot sheep”s milk tea.

It was all part of a 10-day journey through central
Mongolia that we”d planned through an affordable, family-run company that
helped us design our own itinerary and shared our philosophy of travel:
authentic cultural experiences that support small, local businesses.

To that end, my friends and I mostly sidestepped the
large tourist camps at the canvas-cloaked tents called gers, which are
clustered around popular sites that can offer comfortable accommodations and
amenities such as electricity, bathrooms and cafe-style meals. As a result,
“comfortable” is not how I would describe our trip. But we did
experience the hospitality and warmth that are as much a hallmark of the
countryside here as the stunning landscapes on the roadless, rocky steppes.

The day we had our sheep”s milk lunch, as we stepped
into the ger, we felt nervous about intruding on the nomadic shepherds who
surely must”ve had better things to do than host this unexpected band of
tourists. But our hosts seemed hardly fazed as the woman served us and her
husband cheerfully asked what brought us to their neck of the steppes.

More than one-third of Mongolia”s population is crammed
into its bustling capital, Ulan Bator, where trendy fashion and fast food are
easily found among the Soviet-style tenement buildings.

Once you leave the big city, though, it doesn”t take
long for the urban noise to fade, the paved roads to end and the sky to open
up. Another third of the nation”s 3.1 million people are considered nomadic,
and their pastoral lifestyle is still an integral part of Mongolian identity.
But its simplicity can be a revelation for the Western visitor.

Hoping to take in more of the natural wonders, we
considered Ulan Bator only a layover on our way to the Gobi Desert town of
Dalanzadgad. There we met the driver and guide whom the three of us hired to
take us northward, through the desert and grasslands, to the alpine Lake
Khovsgol on the edge of Russia”s Siberian territory.

In the south, where summer days range from mild to
scorching, most gers don”t have heat sources, making for bitterly cold nights
especially when the winds kick up in the Gobi. The lack of bathrooms — or even
outhouses — also posed interesting challenges: How far do you have to go for a
little privacy when there”s not a tree or shrub in sight on the open steppes?
Then there were hours of bone-jarring rides in our Russian jeep (apparently
built without the technology of shock absorption) on the unforgiving terrain.

By Louise Chu

For The Associated Press