Image by jacqueline macou from Pixabay
tear wounds in dust-veiled heavens -
wolves watch yurts from trees.
I have been lucky enough to travel to many countries in my life, but once the travel bug bites you and wanderlust sets in, you’re always looking over the next horizon.
This feeling isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I've found it can be a great catalyst for change in a person's life, driving them to make the leap from the negative to the positive.
One of those places I've never visited but always dreamed about is Mongolia.
In my imagination, Mongolia represents a truly wild place of untouched wilderness and harsh landscape - a place that spawned legends and mythology.
I tried to touch upon that feeling in the Haiku with reference to dragon's teeth and wolves peeking from misty forests.
This idea of Mongolia reflects exactly how I feel about travelling; I become enraptured by the landscapes, falling in love with the natural environments around me. This means I don't often linger in the cities of the countries that I visit for long.
If I'm honest, the city doesn't inspire me.
When I travelled to Thailand years ago I spent three days in Bangkok before jumping a train to a countryside village and ancient ruins called Sukhothai. Most of the rest of my trip was spent in wilder places, from scuba diving the Similan Islands, to hiking in the Jungles of Khao Sok national park, these are the places that inspire me and memories I return to when working on my fantasy fiction novel setting.
It is perhaps not surprising that Mongolia appeals to me, with its nomadic horse-people, wide wilderness and shamanic mystical traditions it calls to my writer's eye. I've dreamed many times about the steppes and mountains of Mongolia, strange dreams full of flight and the smell of ice on the wind.
Although I'm fully aware that the reality of travel to this place in the modern age might be worlds away from my idealistic imaginings of Mongolia, still it remains high on my bucket list of places to visit before I die.
‘From the air Mongolia looks like God’s preliminary sketch for earth, not so much a country as the ingredients out of which countries are made: grass, rock, water and wind.’ ,
Quote from Stanley Stewart In the Empire of Genghis Khan
I would dearly love to traverse those mountains, explore those forests and witness the flight of the Eagle over the vast grasslands of Mongolia.
This is the stuff of an aspiring fantasy author's wildest dreams.
Thanks for reading 🌿
I have decided to challenge myself for a month (from today until the 23rd of July) to post Haiku and accompanying blog on Hive at least 3-4 times/week. Each week will have a different theme based on picture prompts from either Pixabay.com or Unsplash.com.
This week's broad theme is wanderlust.
In this first week, I will share pictures of countries that I have always wanted to visit and write a haiku/blog focused on these places.
To read more about the aesthetics of true haiku, and the difference between haiku and senryu, please check out my post: Haiku Vs Senryu - The Aesthetics of Form
The picture used in this post is creative commons, linked below pic. If you have enjoyed this Haiku, please check out my homepage @raj808 for similar content. Thank you.
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Oh, how to understand 'tare wounds'？I am a little puzzled at it. What does tare mean here？Could you please explain it for me？
Luckily, I have been to a place of North Xinjiang near Mongolia, but maybe nearer to Kazakhstan. I think Mongolian and Kazakh ethnic group of Xinjiang
are both traditionally nomadic horse-people. It is the first time for me to see the horse meat being sold in the local bazaar named Kazak horse sausage. (a kind of minced horse meat contained inside the skin of the long intestine)
I'm very interested in Mongolian history about Genghis Khan, too. When I was in Xinjiang, I felt I was very close to that period of history. In fact, the name of the place we stayed just originated from its Mongolian name.
Welcome to open my blog Oil paintings and watch the photos of a park I took in Xinjiang and enjoy a famous ancient Chinese folk song about Inner Mongolia(which is part of China now, compared to Outer Mongolia).
Hi @kaixin
You caught a typo in my poem, thank you I was a little tired when I was writing yesterday 😂
I meant tear, as in to tear something apart. Like 'rip' it apart.
I will ammend the post now to change the spelling mistake 😊
This is really interesting, and I am a little jealous that you got to visit a place close to the Mongolian border. I am guessing the landscape was similar to Mongolia where you visited? To be honest it is all about the wild landscape for me rather than saying I've visited a country. If it was the same wild plains and mountains, I wouldn't care about borders myself.
I shall check out your blog about Xinjiang with interest 🙂👍
Oh, I c. Thank you for your great explanation! Wonderful Haiku!
I don't know if the landscape is similar to Mongolia, but one thing I make sure is the winter in both is very cold. The sky in Xinjiang is so high and wide, the sun looks very big, at least bigger than my hometown--Central China, and the most impressive feeling is it seems that the wind is everywhere even in summer. So even though the temperature there is high in summer, you still feel cool.
What a pity! I have no talent to describe what I have seen and felt in Xinjiang well in English. I guess it should be more like “Five Central Asian countries” such as Kazakhstan,Uzbekistan, etc. whose common main religion is Islam. At the same time I notice that the local minority food is also similar to these countries, including Nang/馕, pilaf/手抓饭, lamb kebab, etc.
I doubt which religion people in today's Mongolia believes in. Is it still Shamanism？It is very interesting to learn the history about Genghis Khan and his four major successor khanates. The place where I stayed once belonged to one of them. So the place I stayed is really named after its Mongolian name. And the water there is really offered by the melting snow water from the Mountion Tianshan. In ancient times such as in Han dynasty or Tang dynasty, the people in Xinjiang believed in Buddihism. Later in the Mongolia's colonial period, a Mongolian official/nobleman himself converted to Islam and forced the local people in Xinjiang to change their religion(Buddihism) into Islam, too. (Of course, there was a time of Mongolian ruling in Central China, but shorter than in Xinjiang.)
No need to be jealous of me visiting a place near to Mongolia. Just like a poem of Tang dynasty saying, 海内存知己天涯若比邻a bosom friend afar brings a distant land near. You have no idea how I have enjoyed your splendid blogs. You make me feel England so near and intimate. Liverpool and the Mersey mermaid...
Yes, my research has shown me that Shamanism is still widely practiced, as well as Christianity in many places due to the efforts of missionaries 😅 But like other places, such as Mexico and some South American countries, the locals have kinda taken on what is good in Christianity but kept what is good in their traditional Shamanistic practices.
This is a beautiful sentiment, and I agree, that we can learn about new places through our friend's creative expression 🙂🌿
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Mongolian climate is not for me, I think.
!PGM
Lol, yeah there is the sub-zero temperatures to deal with for sure 😂
!LUV
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Nice one Raj. It is on my bucketlist too.
Yeah, it really is a wild place. I've watched so many documentaries about Mongolia now that I feel like I've already been there. But I felt that way about the tropics, and scuba diving, until I visited Thailand and learned how to dive... and then I realised nothing can live up to the reality of visiting a new environment 🙂
Mongolia seems to me to be an extremely interesting place.
!PIZZA
Yeah, it really is a wild place. I've watched so many documentaries about Mongolia now that I feel like I've already been there morenow.
Thanks for the pizza tokens btw 🙂
Based on what we read and watched, Mongolia is an interesting place and its people's way of life too. Hope you will get to visit it and experience how it is to be there.
Thanks farmboy-boss... I dearly hope to visit Mongolia one day too. I've watched so many documentaries about Mongolia now that I feel like I've already been there 🤣
Welcome and wish you the best to you on that goal :)
Same. I want to see the earth.
I get where you're coming from corvidae. I always feel better in myself, as well as less sick with the chronic illness that I've had for a while now when I'm in a wild place, or even in the countryside here in the UK.
I think I need to move out of the city asap 😂
yes! hurry! 😂