I've wanted to visit Mongolia ever since I first read Rolf Potts' dispatch from the land of Genghis Khan that he wrote for Salon back in 1999. Almost ten years later, Tim Wu, another of my favorite travel writers, is making me fall in love with Mongolia all over again. He's already posted three dispatches for Slate Magazine, and here are a couple of the highlights so far:

"More than anything in travel, I love the freedom to make my own mistakes, which you might also call independence. We soon figured out what that means in Mongolia: your own jeep and a translator. That, plus the magic formula: the desire to go where no one else goes."

"After some time driving around the Mongolian countryside, I hit upon a great way to make new friends. It was simple: Draw a line in the dirt, paw the earth a bit, and wrestle to the first fall. Call me primitive, but there's something about fighting in the dirt that seems to foster a certain kind of companionship."

"Mongolian men in the countryside spend their time riding horses, killing animals, and breaking firewood. They tend to hold their face in a fixed grimace. At times, it is like a country of Daniel Craig impersonators. Along with parts of Latin America, it's probably the most macho place I've ever been. And so, my Asian brothers, if you ever want to know what the extremes of Eastern manhood look like, forget about Jet Li or even Bruce Lee. It's Mongolia where Asia gets tough."

Here's part 1 of the series. Part 2. Part 3. You're bored-- go read it.

Christopher Rufo and Keith Ochwat are a couple of fresh filmmakers who, on a whim, decided to fly to Mongolia, where they managed to camp with a tribe of nomadic reindeer herders, challenge a provincial wrestling champion to a match, and drink tea with Mongolian president Nambaryn Enkhbayar. Oh, and they're just 23.

Their half-hour documentary, Roughing It: Mongolia, will be making its premier later this summer on PBS, and they'll be turning it into a series, called what else but Roughing It, coming out in late 2009. Here's more from our interview:

What traveling experiences have you guys had before setting on this documentary?

CHRIS: My first real adventure travel experience was with Keith during the summer of our sophomore year in college. We had arranged jobs as English teachers in Guangdong, China. But the morning we were supposed to leave, we got a frantic call from the Chinese school administrator: "The children have been poisoned and the school is closed. You cannot come anymore. I'm very sorry!" But, luckily, they didn't cancel our airline tickets. So we went to China with no plan whatsoever. We ended up as extras in a Chinese rap music video, hitchhiking 19,500 feet up the Himalaya in the back of a dump truck, and steamboating down the Yangtze River with thousands ofThree Gorges Dam refugees. We were hooked. From that trip, we realized there was a really good chemistry of us two on the road. Almost effortlessly, we met fascinating people and found ourselves in fascinating situations

KEITH: Chris has lived abroad and I have traveled throughout Europe on a number of trips. But we both agree that it wasn't until we got away from the tourist trail and left the city lights behind that we truly found adventure. In China, we pushed ourselves hard to put away the travel guides and rely on our instincts and on those we met to take our travels to the next level. What we learned led us to the incredible adventure we found in Mongolia.

Like so many expats, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi moved abroad right out of college. But since that time, he's had about the most atypical expat experience you can imagine.

He played baseball in Uzbekistan for their national team, and was kicked out of the country by the KGB for criticizing the government in an AP piece he wrote. He moved to Mongolia and become the leading rebounder in the Mongolian Basketball League, where he was nicknamed the "Mongolian Rodman." He then lived in Russia for ten years, where he helped found the deviously entertaining expat rag, the eXile, a bi-weekly which specializes in spewing vitriol at the deserving, and-- take note-- it is not for the faint of heart.

Personally, I've read almost everything he's written for the last ten years, and what I love as much as anything are his descriptions of his life abroad. Realistic verging on depressing, Taibbi discusses the highs-- in every sense of the word-- as well as the lows, of life as an expatriate:

"The expatriate mentality is a tough thing to explain easily. Any affluent or even middle-class American who renounces the good life of sushi delivery and 50-channel cable television to relocate permanently to some third-world hole usually has to be motivated by a highly destructive personality defect. Either that, or something about home creates psychological demons that in turn create the urge for radical escape.

"I'd moved overseas straight out of college and been a classic expatriate ever since. I had all the symptoms: periodic unsuccessful attempts to repatriate, a tendency to try to make grandiose foreign adventures compensate for a total inability to accumulate money; bad teeth; unhealthy personal relationships, etc. I'd been aware for years that my passion for uprooting and completely changing my lifestyle and even my career was like a drug addiction-- not only did I get off on it, but I needed to do it fairly regularly just to keep from getting the shakes."

There's an adventurous ring to the Trans-Siberia Railway--the train that takes seven days to get from China to Mongolia and onto Russia. There's a certain connotation that evokes images of glamor, the exotic and mysterious. Perhaps that's why it's the backdrop for a thriller in the tradition of Hitchcock and Agatha Christie due out this summer. It has Monika Bartyzel on Cinematical eager for its release. I have to agree. It sounds like the perfect blend of travel and intrigue.

In "Transsiberian" Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer play a married American couple, Roy and Jessie, who hop on the train in Beijing (then Peking during the time period that the movie is set) with an aim for a little excitement on their journey home from a stint as missionaries. As what can happen with any travel, but more so, what they envisioned doesn't even come close to reality. Their personalities and missteps get them into less than stellar situations. Sure, they get the initial fun of a train ride and the expansive scenery of this part of the world in the winter, but they also get murder, drug dealing and deception when they settle into their train car with two other travelers. From the summary, here are missteps not to take that could help you avoid a big fat mess:

1. Don't get off the train (However, that puts a damper on sightseeing)
2. If you do get off the train, don't get off the train with the travelers you just met
3. If you do get off the train, don't one of the two of you miss the train and the other get off on the next stop
4. Don't kill anybody if you can help it.
5. If you do kill someone, it might be better to come clean, particularly if the person might be a drug dealer and left a little something in your luggage.

When I've shared train cars with people I've been fairly lucky to not have anything overly weird happen. One guy , though, kept wanting to rub my foot--seriously, but other than that, I've shared food, conversation and slumber without hassle. I'm interested in seeing this flick for sure. Partly, I want to see what parts of Beijing, Lithuania and Spain ended up in the film. Also, I'm hoping Ben Kingsley who plays the officer looking to solve the crime is able to help Roy and Jessie have a happy travelers' tale ending. Somehow, I don't think so.

If only I were a college student. Here's a travel/writing opportunity not to miss. National Geographic Traveler has paired up with the travel company Trovcoa to cook up a very cool essay contest. In 300 words or less, write about an experience that moved you, excited you or changed you. Easy, right?

If yours is chosen out of all the other essays they receive from college students in North America, you will win a trip to Mongolia. This could be your springboard to bigger and better travel writing experiences since you will be working on assignment with the magazine's Editor- In-Chief Keith Bellows. Your work will be published on National Geographic Traveler 's Web site.

This is kind of like "American Idol" or "Dancing with the Stars" but the writer's version. Except, either you win or you don't, and you won't have to stand in front of the judges while they critique your work in front of a live audience. Of course, there's not a million dollar record contract either. But hey, you'll be published by the same magazine that publishes Pico Iyer. And you'll have seen Mongolia. I call that even.

The deadline is December 31, 2007 so you have some time to figure out how to condense down your experience to make it zing.

Want to disappear and never be found?

Such a desire is increasingly difficult in these modern times when internet cafes and satellite telephones reach nearly every corner of the globe.

Escaping the world and living off the grid is the theme of a recent article by Elisabeth Eaves for Forbes Magazine. Eaves discuses the challenges that modern-day technology poses for those who want to disappear, then recommends eight places where one can actually do so. Naturally, most of the places I've never heard of (otherwise they wouldn't be off the grid, now would they?).

Take for example, Tristan da Cunha, a tiny archipelago populated by just 300 people and only reachable by a five-day boat trip from Cape Town, South Africa. Or, there is the Darien Gap between Panama and Columbia where one of the cons listed is, "foreigners occasionally kidnapped."

Of the places I've heard of, Papua New Guinea, Kamchatka, and Mongolia I've only been to one: Mongolia. If the other seven locations are even half as remote as what I saw in Mongolia, you can truly expect to disappear for a long time.

Ready to go shopping in Mongolia? Time to hit the market then, but first you have to know the word that will help you get there.

Today's word is a Mongolian word used in Mongolia:

zakh - market

Mongolian is an Altaic language and spoken by over two million people throughout Mongolia (where it has official language status) and by up to three million people in northern China. Wikipedia doesn't offer much for increasing your Mongolian vocabulary, but it has great background information. Learning Mongolian online will be tough without an understanding of their alphabet or script used. Omniglot is the perfect place to begin to start learning the alphabet. For quick reference use LP's Mongolian Phrasebook on your trip.

Past Mongolian words: mori, gudamj

Um... this is a shot of a camel.

And a pool table.

In the desert.

It's one of those very bizarre travel moments where there is no reason or explanation for what's happening, just an opportunity to shoot a fantastic photograph. This particular bizarre scene was captured in Mongolia's Gobi Desert by Bluepeak. If he knows what's going on, however, he's not sharing it with his Flickr readers.

Nonetheless, a cool shot and very worthy of our Photo of the Day honors.

Today has been an extremely long day of driving. I have no desire to see another car, steering wheel, vehicle, or anything to do with the road. I'm pooped. Only the call of duty keeps me up and that is bringing you today's word and more! See how much I care?

Today's word is a Mongolian word used in Mongolia:

gudamj - street

Mongolian is an Altaic language and spoken by over two million people throughout Mongolia (where it has official language status) and by up to three million people in northern China. Wikipedia doesn't offer much for increasing your Mongolian vocabulary, but it has great background information. Learning Mongolian online will be tough without an understanding of their alphabet or script used. Omniglot is the perfect place to begin to start learning the alphabet. For quick reference use LP's Mongolian Phrasebook on your trip.

Past Mongolian words: mori

Just in case you missed it, the show Going Tribal runs on Discovery and is worth checking out. It was originally produced by the BBC and thus has numerous British characters, but that shouldn't keep you from watching it (jk!). The show follows former British Royal Marine Bruce Parry as he takes a month to immerse himself in the culture, language and rituals of a native community. There was a fair amount of hullaballo about how insensitive the idea is, but I have to say it all seems pretty much on the up and up. Various episodes have had Parry horseback with the Darhads in Mongolia, visit cannibals in West Paupa, practice donga with the Suri in Ethiopia, eat "rat cake" in the Himalayas and hunt in the rainforests of Gabon.