Read the blocks from left to right.

Short bushes like tufts of bristly hair give way to rolling dunes, snowy mountains and mirages of frozen lakes. Traveling in the back of a jeep for ten days in the Gobi Desert presents a range of constantly shifting, dream-like imagery. The vehicle bounces jerkily up and down, left to right, on roads which only a Mongolian can understand. There are frequent mechanical breakdowns and flat tires, which our driver adapts to and fixes in continually inventive, Macgyver-like ways.

“Look! Godzilla!”

Our guide means to say gazelles. They’re too quick to get a good look at. Later, for mile after mile, mice pop in and out of holes in the road. Foxes dash into view and vanish. Vultures feast on the carcass of a collapsed goat. A herd of furry camels seeks out grass amidst the snow and we stop to photograph. They don’t run away. They’re used to people.

“If a wild camel sees a person it will start running and won’t stop for…” and this is where my memory fails me. Our guide tells us that it runs for six days, or six hours or six-hundred kilometres before stopping.

We stop into a ger for lunch. It’s mutton. Again. This time with pasta instead of potatoes. Lots of hospitality in the ger, but no spice in the food. In the west we’re spoiled with the tenderest cuts of meat. This mutton is chewy. Some of those on our trip are vegetarians and eat rice pudding nearly every meal. I’m starting to wonder if they’re better off. On exiting the ger we see the skull of the decapitated sheep we just ate.

Baga Gazriin Chuulu is a site of unusual rock formations, which once hosted a Buddhist temple in the small canyon of Surtiin Am. Under Stalin it was razed and only a bit of the ancient stone walls now remain. We climb the rocks and admire the lush red sky as the sun sets at the site of this grave tragedy.

Urinating in the middle of the night is a pleasure and a terror. As many stars as I could ever hope to see paint the sky and I’m intensely aware that I’m only standing on a tiny ball revolving and rotating in the vastness of space. I don’t know if there are wolves about, but I’m afraid of them nevertheless. As I get further from the ger and closer to the hole-in-the-ground, I’m more and more vulnerable and more and more exhilarated. Back in the ger, the fire is dying, so I shovel some more dung into the stove and crawl into bed with all my clothes on.

Mongolian towns feel even more remote than the camps of gers in the middle of the desert. They seem ill-fitted to the landscape. A billboard announces Trees Are Our Future! There is a little patch of small trees – planted by well-meaning Korean volunteers – meant to slow the continual growth of the desert and absorb some of the sand, which blows into towns and fills people’s lungs, blowing even further, picking up pollutants in China, reaching as far as Korea. It’s in one of these towns we meet an American Peace Corps volunteer.

“I put down Asia for my region and I was placed here.”

He seems fully entrenched. Unlike places like Barcelona or Seoul, where foreigners spend much of their time with other foreigners, he’s completely immersed in Mongolian culture, fluent in the language and often caught up in the drinking habits.

“Yeah, if they’re drinking, and they see me walk by, a big white guy, I pretty much have to go over. I usually do at least one shot, but it’s hard to walk away. I’ve had some rough mornings.”

Vodka is for sale in every town and empty bottles are strewn here and there across the expansive desert. A legacy of the Soviet era. There’s a brand with Genghis Khan himself on the bottle.

Airag is another way Mongolians get their alcohol fix. But unlike vodka, the alcohol content is rather low. It’s no exception to most Mongolian fare, which derives from meat or dairy. It’s fermented mares’ milk. It sounds disgusting, but it’s really not so bad if you drink a moderate amount as we do inside our host’s ger. We’re crowded together with the family of our tour guide’s sister. The airag is sour, but hearty. The only form of communication between us and our hosts is them offering us more airag, or some sour biscuits also made from mares’ milk, and us accepting it politely.

This time when I go out at night to do my business, instead of a flat desert, I find myself stumbling around between sleeping cows. I can’t find the latrine, so I relieve myself near the cows, hoping they don’t mind. Soon we’ll be back in the city away from herds of cows, goats, sheep and camels. I’m feeling a bit sentimental looking at these hooved beasts as I zip up my fly and head back into the warmth of the ger.

Years ago, in high school, I took a course called “Literature of Other Cultures.” The class project was to read three books from one country and give a report. I chose Russia. The former Cold War enemy always held an attraction for me, and ninety percent of the reason for this was the sound of the language itself. Those who criticize Russian as harsh are completely wrong, and are confusing it with the legacy of dictatorial regimes or unforgiving winters. Russian sounds strong, but that’s not the same as harsh. And like the famous wooden lace architecture of Siberian houses, it’s equally colorful and delicate. The other ten percent of my fascination with Russia was a mixture of onion domes, spy movie villains and mysterious eastern mysticism.

The first two books I read were Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. I liked both, but the third, Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, opened up a whole other world. The passionate, seething of the unnamed narrator was far more engrossing than the petty schoolboy envy of A Separate Peace. It put Holden Caulfield to shame. The macho stoicism of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea had nothing on the pathetic angst of a nobody functionary in St. Petersburg. Notes from Underground led to Crime and Punishment, House of the Dead, and The Idiot. I have loved other writers, but Dostoevsky will always be my number one.

That’s why visiting his former residence in St. Petersburg was something of a pilgrimage. The last place he lived before he died is the same place he dreamed up Dmitri Karamazov’s romantic self-destruction and Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor in his best novel The Brothers Karamazov.

Inside his former residence you can see the stand where he hung his hat, the desk where he wrote, and the packet of cigarettes on which his daughter wrote, “Papa died today.”

Below the residence is a museum with a collection of old letters, and photos of him and his contemporaries. My favorite exhibit was on the writer’s thoughts of the various places he’d visited in Europe (he praised London, dismissed Zurich).

The exoticism of Russia was originally part of its appeal. But the more time I’ve spent with Dostoevsky, and inside his home, the exoticism has changed to a familiarity, which fictitious though it may be, has a much stronger appeal.

I don’t know what causes scores of dead fish to decorate the shore. A storm? Disease? A fishing accident? Pollution?

Or maybe they thought they could walk.

Between the four of us we have two good American drivers licenses, one expired American license and one British learner’s permit. What we really need are motorcycle licenses, but it’s alright if we can prove we know how to ride.

I turn on the scooter and make a small circle in the open space. I pass. Audra is next. She puts the key in the ignition but can’t start the bike. I try to talk her through it, but I’m silenced. She has to figure this out herself.

“I’ve ridden a motorcycle back home, but it’s not the same,” she says.

I translate this into Chinese as something like, “Her home bike not same.”

“Hao hao hao.” She is instructed on how to start the bike. After a small loop without crashing, we are on our way.

The squidgy black starfish are everywhere. I don’t notice them at first. But once I see one, I see all of them, poking their spindly extremities out of the rocks. I came to the shore following crabs that darted out of sight every time I spotted one, and now I see life everywhere. It’s tricky to walk around without killing or dislodging some hapless invertebrate. Back on the beach hermit crabs abound. If you look closely you can see the shells shaking. When you pick one up it pops out, not to say hello, but to make an escape. Is it wrong to take a picture of this struggling creature? Perhaps. But it is rather cute.

There’s a little bit of Jurassic Park on Liuqiu, in the oddly named Wild Boar Ditch. It’s a jungle of such stunning beauty that I’m surprised we can just park our scooters and enter it so easily, like we’re walking into Wal-Mart.

The dense trees have a soundproofing effect. Although there are other tourists about, their chatter is absorbed into this enchanted forest and it’s quiet and peaceful. There are no wide expanses, only paths cut through tall trees, and sometimes it feels like it’s just the four of us.

The Black Dwarf Cave has a strange, tragic and perhaps false history. The story goes that when the Dutch were kicked off Liuqiu, they left some African slaves behind who took up residence in a cave. These diminutive slaves, to avoid starvation, stole from trading boats, which docked nearby. In way of retribution, the inside of their cave was set on fire, burning them alive.

It’s the most popular tourist destination on the island.

The cave has since collapsed, but for a cheap thrill you can crawl through the tiny space and maybe not bang your head on the ceiling if you’re lucky.

Invented in Taichung, this is both a drink and a snack. Known as bubble tea back home, it’s chewy tapioca balls in milk tea.

Pearl Milk Tea - 珍珠奶茶

The tapioca balls can be added to a whole host of other drinks as well, such as green tea or lemon-lime concoctions.

Almond Milk 杏仁牛奶 (xing ren niu nai)

Light and sweet. This is a good after-dinner treat.

Ginger Milk Tea 薑母奶茶 (jiang mu nai cha)

Liquid ginger snaps. This has a kick to it. If it’s done well, the ginger flavor is quite strong and causes the inside of the mouth to tingle. Drink it hot on a cold, rainy day.

Frozen Drinks 冰沙 (bing sha)

These are certainly not exclusive to Taiwan, but the climate makes the fruit cheap and fresh. Conventional flavors include mango (芒果- mang guo), pineapple (鳳梨 – feng li), watermelon (西瓜 – xi gua) and strawberry (草莓 – cao mei). Less ordinary flavors include red bean (紅豆 – hong dou), and various fruit flavors mixed with seaweed (海菜 – hai cai).

pineapple ice drink - 鳳梨冰沙

Millet Wine 小米酒 (xiao mi jiu)

Traditionally made by Taiwan’s indigenous people, this drink can be found wherever they are, which means most mountain towns and on the east coast. It’s a bit sweet and a bit sour and it goes down smooth.

millet wine - 小米酒

Soy Milk – 豆漿 (dou jiang)

I’d always thought of soy milk as a drink for health freaks, vegans and lactose intolerants. That’s because in the West it’s used as a substitute for milk. Now I consider it a drink in its own right. The soy milk in Taiwan is nothing like what you find in the health food section of your local supermarket in the states or Europe. You can actually taste the soy, and it doesn’t take like paint. Served hot or cold for damp winter or humid summers.

That sounds really pretentious, I know.

Anyways, this is the gondola that takes you to Maokong.