notes and images

Tag: mongolia

Flying with kids under two

Paris 2015: transit stop from Beijing en route to Hamburg via Copenhagen. Kid aged five months.

Flying with babies, zero to two. They fly free. How hard can it be? 

The first thing to remember when you board a plane with your child is this: She has Every. Right. To be there. If they let her board, she’s as legitimate as anyone on the plane. Do your best to be a considerate passenger, for sure. But talkative aunties and loudsnorers are no more entitled to anything on that plane than you and your little kid. They don’t feel guilty, and nor should you. You’re not a selfish, anti-social monster. Your kid is not the Devil’s Spawn! You’re a travelling parent. That’s perfectly normal.

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Review of Osprey Poco baby carrier

If you like hiking and you have a child, well, the good news is you can keep hiking. I did a lot of research online before our kid arrived about the best heavy duty child carrier. I wanted something that could conceivably support an overnight camping hike. The Osprey Poco gets a lot of love online, and deservedly so.

This thing transformed my life, because it showed me you can take your kid anywhere.

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Mongolia’s Malchin Peak and Potani Glacier

The wind only howls when you’re inside. Something about the pipes and cavities in a building seems to cause the eerie wail that changes pitch like a theremin in a fifties sci-fi classic. Outside, at nearly 4,000 meters, above a glacier and far from the nearest building, the wind just roars. It’s less like a vintage cinema score and more like standing behind a jet airliner at the end of a runway; a relentless loud roar that varies only in how hard it buffets you as you balance – or try to – on a path made of loose boulders on a twenty degree slope. That’s all I was aware of, that and the fiercely bright blue sky, as I made my way up the shoulder of Malchin Peak, a 4,050 meter high pile of grey boulders above the Potani Glacier in the far west of Mongolia. The altitude didn’t bother me; the boulders didn’t bother me. But that roar was so loud it seemed to consume the very oxygen around. The summit seemed so close, the visual definition crystal clear in the frighteningly bright and blinding sun. But I knew I wasn’t going to reach it. That roaring wind literally blew it from my grasp.

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Eight days in Western Mongolia with a toddler

Turns out you can do pretty much anything with a toddler. Sure, it can be tiring. Yes, it’s sometimes daunting. And true, the idea of brunch every Sunday can often seem more appealing in the short term than planning and doing an eight day camping trip in a remote place far from any services. But, really, all you need to do is get out your door. That’s always the hardest part. And like many things that are hard, this trip was correspondingly memorable, and so rewarding. To see our child in the wilderness, playing happily with new friends just met, with only the unspoken language of childhood in common; to lay a foundation in her subconscious for a lifelong love of the outdoors; this alone made it worthwhile. The incredible trip we had while doing that was just a bonus.

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Ulan Bator on Business

It’s true that you don’t get much sense for a place on business trips. Airports, hotels, conference rooms; if you’re lucky the program includes a “cultural performance” or “typical local restaurant”. Depending on the nature of the trip you enjoy this bit or endure it, waiting to go home to family and friends.

Occasionally though, usually in odd destinations with few outbound flights per day, you wind up with time up your sleeve between the closing remarks and the boarding call. So it was two autumns back when I found myself with an afternoon in Ulan Bator.

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