Matt Gardiner
June 25, 2026

Life has these funny little moments where you know you are in the right place. 

The journey had been a long one. I had left home four days ago, after a crazed night full of packing spreadsheets and gear strewn across my bed. The overnight flight to Seoul had offered a merciful slice of sleep, and a huge bowl of glass noodles and banchan upon arrival rejuvenated my spirits. At the gate, I remember earning strange looks for my physical therapy routine, which included strange squats and lunges on the airport floor, and watching a partly-animated Korean children’s baseball show with the kids sitting next to me on the waiting bench. 

Even after arriving in Ulaanbaatar, the trip retained an otherworldly quality. Namja, NOMAD’s airport shuttle, picked me up right as I cleared customs. At nearly three in the morning, our drive into the city turned into a karaoke session, from Mongolian classics like the Hu’s “Yuve Yuve Yu,” to Johnny Cash’s “Country Boy.” After a few errands the next day, it was soon time to leave the city for our field site, piling into minivans for hours of bumps, jostling, and new friendly faces. 

But as we pulled into camp for the night, the fatigue of the journey was replaced by excitement. We sprang from the vans, nearly running for the massive walls before us. Soon, NOMAD archaeologists T. Tuvshinjargal and Bryan Miller guided us through the site, known as Baibalyk. Built as an eighth-century Uyghur city and fort, the site was later overlaid with a sixteenth-century Buddhist monastery. Like many archaeological sites in Mongolia, it remains understudied. 

As the sun set over Baibalyk, we worked together to set up our tents just a few hundred feet away. For me, the fatigue of the journey was gone, as was the adrenaline and excitement of arrival. Instead, I felt a profound sense of serenity, of rightness. 

You never quite know what Mongolia will bring you. Our coming days would see bumpy, unpaved roads, long days excavating in the sun, freezing nights; Bronze Age deer stones and Mongol burials, campfires, dancing in the rain. But I keep returning to that calm, certain feeling. Mongolia keeps showing me that I am in the right place.