Longreads

Ron Gluckman in 2003 on the "last great place" for tourism, Mongolia:

"Also bitten by the Mongolia bug is Darius Teter, a deputy director with the Asian Development Bank. 'The only thing predictable about Mongolia is its randomness,' he says. A nature buff who leaves the office on Fridays with a jeep full of supplies and no real destination, he details frozen engine blocks and scores of life-threatening misadventures. Still, he maintains, Mongolia is 'paradise. Really, it is. Just a different sort.' "That’s what draws most visitors to this remote land mass, as big as Europe but with fewer than three million people. And eight times that number of sheep and goats. All set in a spectacular canvas of cascading hills and endless plains, trimmed with forest and desert, everywhere looking undeveloped and pure, seemingly unchanged and untouched for eons."