Some people say a Mongolian man is happiest when roaming free across the open land on a horse…. Some people say a Mongolian man is happiest when roaming free across the open land on a horse. Although I didn’t know of this proverb until later, I could have deduced it from my first days in Mongolia.

I expected the country to be a desert, but rolling hills and grassy steppes make up the land near the Russian border. There are few roads, few fences and very few people.

The herdsmen accompanying me were curious about my Western clothing and full beard. Tradition dictates that young Mongolian men remain clean-shaven, respecting their bearded elders. The best I could do was to stroke my beard and say “Chinggis Khan,” invoking the thought of their bearded national hero, Ghengis Khan, and making them laugh uneasily.

We crossed the land on Mongolian ponies, small creatures that supported the weight of us and our gear with surprising ease, and two children joined us, learning to master the skills of riding. When one of them became eager, flipping the reins quickly and yelling “chu, chu, chu” to make the pony break into a gallop, a more experienced rider flew ahead, catching up with the boy and admonishing him for going too fast.

The dry heat of the steppe quickly disappeared with the sun, leaving a cold darkness on the land as we made camp. Hetgebaatar, one of the herdsmen, spoke to me in broken Russian, the only language we had in common. He expressed interest in my water bottle, since he had never seen the kind of flexible plastic it was made of. I was cold, so I traded it to him for one of his jackets. We both thought we had gotten the better deal.

The next day, we approached Ulaanbaatar, the central city and capital of Mongolia. Nestled among three mountains, the city does not show itself from a distance, except for the small industrial works and villages that surround it.

After parting with the herdsman, I went into the city, which appeared much more Western than any of the other Mongolian towns I’d seen. Several billboards advertised real estate services, travel agencies and employment offers, but there were few tall buildings even in the center of the city. The capital buildings in Sukhbaatar Square were short, wide and understated, with a plain dignity.

The economic interests of South Korea are evident in Ulaanbaatar. Although many public signs appear in Mongolian Cyrillic and English, some offer Korean instead of English. After centuries of being under Chinese and Russian influences, Mongolia is still affected by foreign investments.

Ulaanbaatar’s main supermarket is one of the nation’s many projects funded by South Korea. An old man in the market looked up at an “exit” sign, written in Korean, and shook his head. Speaking in Russian, which he learned from Soviet soldiers, he told me, “All we want is to be Mongolian, to be ourselves.”

The Soviets, who had a large military presence in Mongolia until both countries abandoned Communism in 1990 and 1991, built a large, open rotunda on the southern mountain, overlooking all of Ulaanbaatar. I climbed the slope, past the vendors and gift shops, and entered the gallery, which was decorated with socialist, realist artwork.

Fading mosaic tiles depicting Soviet and Mongolian troops victorious over the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II covered the walls. Some parts of the montage had fallen apart and had never been repaired. A statue of a soldier standing guard at the summit had become a slide for young children.

A large group of people sat along the edge of the rotunda, singing traditional music in the arid mountain breeze. Some people had climbed to the peak to add a rock or prayer flag to a pile of stones and banners that had sprung up in the center of the gallery. The large majority of Mongolians is Buddhist, and they have revived the religious tradition of leaving prayer symbols at important sites.

One man told me, “One does not pray for their life to improve, only to stay the same.” Others came to pray for the well-being of loved ones.

Seeking peace from the city, I found the main Buddhist monastery of Ulaanbaatar, the landmark around which the city was built. Several people had come to turn prayer wheels and light incense during their lunch breaks, and others briefly sat in on a prayer reading by a Buddhist cleric.

I was taken aback by the integral role religion plays in Mongolians’ daily lives. Buddhism was not the high-minded, unattainable ideal that it often appears to be in Western culture. In Mongolia, there was no conflict or controversy about religion, only the sincere practice of it.

As if to illustrate the fusion of religious and secular life, a Buddhist lama student walked by, talking and laughing on a cellular phone.

The sun dipped low in the sky, burning the horizon between two of the mountains around the city. I wandered back to Sukhbaatar Square to watch craftsmen sell their wares to tourists. I found an English newspaper and sat under the statue of Sukhbaatar, the hero of the Mongolian Communist revolution. He sits on a walking horse, hand raised. The inscription under his figure, written in old Mongolian glyphs, tells of his skill as a horseman. I wondered, as the evening grew cold, if Sukhbaatar had been as content as I had roaming free across the steppes.

Michael Mastroianni says “bayarlaa” to the herdsmen who showed him the true happiness of life on the open land. He can be reached at [email protected].