30 hours on a train_Ulaanbaatar

Planes, trains and automobiles, for weeks our bodies were in motion. We haven’t stopped moving for two weeks straight, constantly racing towards our next destination. Speeding at 140km per hour on the motorway in a two-seater Smart Car, my boyfriend opened the window and said, “If I dropped this apple out this window, it will roll at the speed of 140km.”
At the halfway point of our thirty hour train ride to Ulaanbaatar, the custom inspector at the China/Mongolian border asked me to smile for her as I didn't resemble my happy passport photo. She gave a customary giggle in response, which I would later learn is present in the Mongolian people. I didn’t know it on the train, but I was about to enter the happiness place in the world.
Seated for our first stationary meal, I noticed the first course on the muli-course menu was “patience”. This came out as three bites of amuse bouche, which we enjoyed as our bodies slowed down to human speed. After dinner, we strolled along the roadside listening to trees clapping in the wind. We stopped under the swaying trees and were grateful to be standing still while the rest of the world moved around us. Happiness is the sound of trees.
Ulaanbaatar is a place where it doesn't matter if it is Monday or Saturday. Life just happens. On our drive to the Naadam Festival, "the three games of men": Mongolian wrestling, horse racing and archery, I watched as men and women walked long stretches of country roads with nothing but a plastic bag for water, a hundred miles to anywhere. “It must take them all day to get to their destination,” mentioned to our tour guide Segi. “No, they could take the bus, or hitch-hiking is common here. They choose to walk because it makes them happy.” With nothing but the horizon in sight, they are focused with little distraction. Happiness is a long walk.
At the Naadam Festival, I watched fathers ready their sons as young as four years old for the horse racing competition. The young jockeys rode without saddles to keep the weight as light as possible for the horse. This is a much celebrated event, and families gathered to support their rider. Fathers whispered wisdoms to their sons for the mental endurance of the race. “Huchtei bolon naizarhag baigarai,” said one to his little boy, racer number 288. “Be friendly, be strong.” Happiness is a loving family.
Babies in Mongolia are considered gods. They believe when babies are born they are the purist forms of humans. As we age, we get disrupted by human maladies and move away from nature. It's when we move away from nature that we are unhappy.
Our tour guide said she was the first person to hold a PhD in Mongolian Art. She giggles from her belly and it shakes her all over. She studied in Russia where she said people there had embedded frown lines set on their faces. She tried to make a furrow face as she said this, and her facial muscles couldn’t even conjure a sad face. The level of societal happiness is written on the citizens’ faces. I asked her what keeps the Mongolian people happy.
Younger generations of Mongolians are swapping gers for city apartments, and the city life, she said. So different from where they've come, they throw themselves in the stresses of seven day work weeks, 9pm conference calls and all that Hongkongers calls normality. “Everyone [in the city] likes to wear black," she said. “When you are happy you don’t wear black!”
Mongolians are some of the most nationalistic I’ve met and though modern city life has stepped in, they remain unchanged. They respect their culture and the lands they’ve taking care of, never stepping too far away from traditions even though modern life and its amenities are appealing. People here celebrated the terrains they came from, and certainly didn’t look down upon it or try to distance themselves from their beginnings. Happiness is keeping to your roots.
On my last day before leaving Ulaanbaatar, I walked for some time, my eyes taking in the open green terrains. With a four-winged flying creature to accompany me, I thought about my lessons. The rules for happiness are very simple. Be honest with the trees, laugh from the belly and don’t wear black. Keep to your traditions and to those who will pass their wisdom to you. Stay young like new borns and don’t frown like the Russians. Then walk a thousand miles into the horizon.