SojournAsia's Summer Nomadic Studies Program is a six-week long journey across the great expanse that is Mongolia. Like nomads ourselves, we will explore this vast country where horses outnumber the 2.5 million Mongols who call this land home. Learn more about yourself, Mongols and the ancient spirit and tradition of nomadic survival. With the wilderness as your classroom, learn about ecology, geology, paleoanthropology, wild and domestic horse and camels, and the rich history and culture of the central Asiatic plateau. Exploring this rugged terrain and living with these strong nomadic people, will, without a doubt, inspire and change you deeply.

WEEK ONE: ORIENTATION

"It is far better to see it once than to hear of it a thousand times."
-Mongolian Proverb

		In our first week we will travel from the United States to Beijing, where Mongol Kublai Khan established the capital of his empire, the Yuan dynasty, in 1272. After a brief two-day tour of the city, we depart on the famous Trans-Siberian Express train, traveling across inner Mongolia to reach the capital of Mongolia, Ulan Batar. After orientation, we will explore some of the city's
museums and you will meet your language teacher Tsering Digid, a native of the Gobi desert, and Alina and Erdene, your American and Mongolian Sojourn coordinators. When not playing music in her yurt or playing with children, Alina has been living and working in Mongolia for the past two years as a Peace Corps English teacher. Erdene is a warm and passionate professor of biological anthropology at the University of U.B. where she studies ancient human remains, of which there are a lot of in Mongolia. Taking advantage of U.B.'s rich people resources, we will have lectures on Mongolian history, nomads, and Mongolian Traditional medicine.

WEEK TWO: NOMADS OF THE DESERT

"The boundless greatness of the desert is probably still a mystery to the nomads. The only thing the Old Mongols know for certain is that their love for the steppe and the desert has ever grown stronger in their souls."
-Sven Hedin, Music of the Mongols, 1943.

Of all the world's arid lands, the Gobi (which simply means 'desert') has the greatest air of mystery about it, lying at the heart of Asia's remotest hinterland. The Gobi exerts a magnetic pull on anyone drawn to vast, unspoiled, and untamed places. When we first travel to the Gobi desert, we will live with Tsering Digid's extended family who herd camels, sheeps, and goats. We will explore
dramatic cliffs and the vast sand dunes of Hongoryn Els that stretch as far as the eye can see in the two million hectare Gurvansaikan National Park. We will visit the famous buttes and spires of 'Flaming Cliffs' where famous Andrew Chapman-Jones discovered the first nest of dinasour eggs the world has ever seen, and we will see YolinAm, a canyon of frozen ice beneath the hot desert. After learning about camels and survival in one of the world's harshest yet most beautiful environments, we will head north.

WEEK THREE: WATERFALLS, MOUNTAINS, AND FESTIVALS

"Not to have known either the mountain or the desert is not to have known one's self."
-Joseph Wood Krutch, The Desert Year 1952.

WEEK FOUR: NOMADIC SKILLS AND HOMESTAY

		We travel to Tsetserleg, the capital of Arkhangai, and on to Bulgan, the satellite capital a mere 30 km away. This region is known as the Switzerland of Mongolia for its medicinal plants, larch forests, and its love of Buddhism. Here we will stay with nomads and learn how they live, each of us acquiring a nomadic skill. While learning how to ride and sing to horses, how to herd sheep and milk horses and
cows, students will also choose another skill to master, from singing and wrestling, to building a ger (yurt) and horse racing, from making cheese and yogurt, to identifying medicinal plants. It is during this week that students will become most intimately acquainted with Mongol nomadic life and family.

WEEK FIVE: ECOLOGY AND HORSERIDING IN THE FOREST LAKE WILDERNESS

"The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask"
-Nancy Newhall, Encounters with the Archdruid

Saying goodbye to our homestay families, we will travel to Terkhin Tsagaan, known as the White Lake. Terkhin Tsagaan is situated in Lake National Park, established for the conservation of breathtaking scenery and endangered flora and fauna. Completely undeveloped, the park contains one of the most beautiful lakes in Mongolia, formed thousands of years ago when the lava from a nearby volcano flowed into the Terk River and created a natural dam. Here, we will ride horses, study local flora and fauna, and encourage journal writing in the tradition of Thoreau: observing the effects of quiet, solitude and nature upon the spirit.

WEEK SIX: RETURN AND REFLECTION

From the White Lake we make our way back to Ulan Batar, where we will rest, relax, and explore the city. The group will then travel an hour outside the capital to the wilderness retreat of Terelj for disorientation before departure home.
Caught between Mao and Stalin and the modern forces of this century, Mongolia has been a free democracy since 1990. Without Russian support, it has been forced to rely on its ancient Nomadic way of life for survival. The crossroads of Asia, truly the roof of the world with its vast sacred blue sky, this vast wilderness is one of the last safe refuges left on the planet.