Just after my soulmate died in 2020, Australia’s covid lockdown and border closures kicked in. In those black days when I was confined alone to a house that not only suffocated but threatened my very sanity, one word emerged in the darkness: Mongolia.
During the crazy hardships and challenges of the next few years, where I was sure that either I or the world had gone mad, possibly both, Mongolia arose as a whisper on every breeze.
Two years later the borders finally opened, and my family were reunited for the first time since before his death. But some things are just not meant to be. Within a few days, floods hit and we were separated. I was once again cut off and alone. The final blow fell when we lost all communication. My heart was trashed all over again.
Weary of cursing my fate, I turned to my personal brand of therapy – ordering travel guidebooks.
Which brought me to Mongolia, three years and four months after those bleak early days.
What was the drawcard? To breathe the air of never-ending openness, with no reminders of a past that was finished too soon or a future that was broken. To escape to a land that was different, to tap into an alternate reality; where my spirit could roam free from the pain that is raw grief.
To cry into a strange wind.
Now that I am here, the need to let a unfamiliar wind dry my tears has passed.
As the first rays of the sun caress the mountains and sand dunes, changing colours as the day unfolds, I am embraced by beauty.
The drumming of horses’ hooves as they race across the steppe returned to me what I thought was gone forever – my heart’s ability to sing. The broad wings of eagles gliding on the thermals remind my spirit of its own love of soaring.
This land which has endured its own harsh realities, survived life that comes and goes – often brutally, has restored a sense of peace in me.
Ironic, for a country that produced one of the greatest warriors and conquerors the world has known.