Here begins the Final Chapter of ICantBelieveItsNotBaatar. We left UB a couple days ago but I was so exhausted with the business of leaving that I didn't have the time or inclination to write about it at the time. I will though have a series of 5 or 6 final posts to conclude the blog, before it seeps into the ether of the dead blogs that so populate the Internet.
April was a month of travel for me. I spent little time in UB or even Mongolia and instead I found myself far from the exhilarating chaos of this country. My travel itinerary reads and feels a bit ridiculous: From UB to Bishkek to Lake Issyk Kul to Manas Airport, Bishkek to UB (for 6 hours) to Beijing to Hong Kong airport to Melbourne to Hong Kong (in what turned out to be a visa run) to Beijing and finally back to UB on May 2nd. All told, I think I spent over 30 hours in the air and perhaps up to 60 if you include all the time getting to and from airports, waiting, driving through the Kyrgyz landscape, and so on.
After all this time away, returning to UB generates a unique feeling that mixes anticipation, dread, hope, relief, depression and buoyancy. You may start to feel it when you first hear someone speaking Mongolian in the airport, after going without its whispered, squelching and spittle-infused timbre for the time you've been out of the country. Or, it might start when you're on the plane and you spot the endless brown of the steppe out of the window. Or, alternately, it could hit you as you pass through the impossibly quaint airport and emerge into the arrivals "hall" (it's more of a small lounge at Chinggis Khan International).
Tess recently said that Mongolia's good nicely balances out its negative aspects. While it has its difficulties (weather, supply chains, occasional whispers of expats being robbed/kidnapped/raped), we have found UB to be an easier place to actually live in than say Beijing. There's so few interesting, non-degenerate expats that once you meet someone that may be sane (or at least not insane) you make efforts to include them in your circle. This isn't to say that UB isn't cliquey, because it is, but that there just aren't that many cliques and generally people slide into a crew with relative ease, as compared to more usual expat spots like Beijing where making friends is an alienating experience, for the most part.
What I guess that I'm getting at is that returning to UB feels like coming home. You're glad to be able to use your stuff and to sleep in a familiar bed and to see your friends, but somewhat disappointed by what you call home. I first came to UB in January 2012, unsure of what we were getting into and unsure of what to expect, but somehow over the past 18 months or so, I've been there more and more (moving there full time in August) and it's become home.
As I flew in on the morning of May 2nd, I experienced an acute form of this feeling. This would be the last time that this return would be a return home. Ostensibly, I was returning to gather our shit and get out of there (and eventually return back to Australia). So, although we might go back to Mongolia in a few years to check out the development (or lack there of), it wouldn't be a return home. As the plane touched down, I thought to myself, "So begins the end."
Returns are always linked to departures.
