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A review by kalkie
Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia by Louisa Waugh
4.0
This is a lovely, well written books. It charts a year spent in Tsengel, the most westerly village in Mongolia, by British journalist, Louisa Waugh. Having previously spent two years in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital, Louisa decided to venture to the wilds of Mongolia and see how the local nomads live.
The Tsengels are split into three distinct ethnic groups - the Mongols, the Tuvans and the Kazakhs. She has to learn to deal with each of these groups individually as well as learning to survive the harshness of nomad life in one of the most remote and inhospitable parts of the world.
The writing is beautiful and the reader really gets a sense of life in the wilderness. In one part she sends a letter to her mother saying -
... the most profound change is in the noise, or rather the silence. The sounds I've been inundated with all my life, you know - TV, the buzz of the fridge, doorbells and telephones - all gone. Like they never even existed. I never hear radio or TV broadcasts, flick switches, run a bath, answer the phone or drive a car. When there are no visitors and it's just me here in the ger, it's so utterly silent that I can hear the wings of a bird flying over the roof.
The book ends with Louisa's preparations for leaving Tsengel at the end of a long hard year. My only disappointment with this book is it didn't have a final chapter to cover how Louisa dealt with and felt about being re-introduced to urban life. But overall it is a great read, and one which I would recommend to anyone who likes reading autobiographies and travel writing.
The Tsengels are split into three distinct ethnic groups - the Mongols, the Tuvans and the Kazakhs. She has to learn to deal with each of these groups individually as well as learning to survive the harshness of nomad life in one of the most remote and inhospitable parts of the world.
The writing is beautiful and the reader really gets a sense of life in the wilderness. In one part she sends a letter to her mother saying -
... the most profound change is in the noise, or rather the silence. The sounds I've been inundated with all my life, you know - TV, the buzz of the fridge, doorbells and telephones - all gone. Like they never even existed. I never hear radio or TV broadcasts, flick switches, run a bath, answer the phone or drive a car. When there are no visitors and it's just me here in the ger, it's so utterly silent that I can hear the wings of a bird flying over the roof.
The book ends with Louisa's preparations for leaving Tsengel at the end of a long hard year. My only disappointment with this book is it didn't have a final chapter to cover how Louisa dealt with and felt about being re-introduced to urban life. But overall it is a great read, and one which I would recommend to anyone who likes reading autobiographies and travel writing.