Days turn into an ageless cycle of random moments, scanning of the heavens, simple meals, long journeys. “In a world flooded with distractions, Mongolia returns one to something ancestral,” Iyer writes. Naturally, I was curious to read Iyer’s impressions of Mongolia, even though our experiences were very different: I spent most of my time in the Bayan-Ölgii aimag, or province, where most people speak Kazakh and practice Islam, while Iyer traveled across the Gobi Desert where Buddhism is the main religion and the locals speak Mongolian. “Sometimes people like me have to take conscious measures to step into the stillness and silence and be reminded of how it washes us clean.” Something Iyer said also evoked Tuul’s comment about the fresh wind: “Anybody who travels knows that you’re not really doing so in order to move around - you’re travelling in order to be moved.” Krista Tippett, host of the public radio program and podcast On Being, has described Iyer as “one of our most elegant explorers of what he calls the ‘inner world.'”Īs I listened to their conversation, a printed transcript on my desk, I found myself highlighting many phrases, including this one: If you’re wondering why this is coincidental, here’s why: I have long admired Iyer’s writing and this year, in Hong Kong, will moderate his session at the 71st CFA Institute Annual Conference on “The Art of Stillness,” based on the book and TED Talk of the same title. Most recently, I discovered that author and travel writer Pico Iyer published a piece on Mongolia, “ The Heart-Clearing Stillness of the Mongolian Countryside,” shortly after my return. A recurring theme was, “What are the chances ?” I looked up the definition of coincidence - “A remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection” - and, indeed, that was the case over and over again.
#PICO IYER THE ART OF STILLNESS TRANSCRIPT SERIES#
“Fate” seems too deterministic in this context, so perhaps “serendipity” or “coincidence” is the best way to describe a series of encounters that accompanied this expedition. The further we journeyed along the migration, the deeper I receded into the stillness, often walking alone for miles and hearing nothing but the sound of my own feet crunching on the snow or the occasional plaintive bleating of a sheep or goat. To give you some context on the emptiness, Mongolia is 1,564,116 sq kms, or about four times the size of Germany, but has a population of just over 3 million, making it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. And with no internet access, I was truly “off the grid”. In the vast emptiness, not a leaf, just land and sky. As we walked, the terrain turned from sand to snow and our connection to the world receded with every step. Our gaggle of shutterbugs set out across the Altai Mountains with several herders, two English-speaking local guides, and hundreds of animals, including Bactrian camels, yaks, sheep, and goats. Our destination: the remote Tavan Bogd National Park. So began an extraordinary journey led by British filmmaker and photographer Timothy Allen to join the annual migration of a family of Kazakh eagle hunters and their livestock from their winter camp to the spring camp - an epic trek covering 150 kilometers (about 93 miles) over five days, on foot. What I did not know then was that the “fresh wind” would be a rejuvenating force. We were bound for Ölgii in the westernmost province of Mongolia, the country’s only Kazakh-majority province, and what was to be the adventure of a lifetime.Īt the time, I didn’t think to ask Tuul what she meant, but on some level I understood that I would be changed. “When you arrive in the west, a fresh wind will greet you,” said Tuul, our Mongolian guide, as I headed to Chinggis Khaan International Airport in Ulaanbaatar with a small group of photographers.