How we travel

Returning home to Singapore fresh from our winter travels in Mongolia, one of the most common questions we got was about our one-week stay with Elik, an eagle hunter living with his 2 Golden Eagles in the frigid steppes of Mongolia. “How did you find him?”.

Our answer always stunned our audience. We found Elik while traveling between a small Kazakh town and the provincial capital on a local bus that plied the route to ferry villagers looking to top-up food or essentials. Before we found him, we had spent days in the city asking how we could best experience the eagle hunting tradition in an authentic manner. Our queries yielded mostly tour packages or guides accustomed to taking tourists for manicured visits, which included little more than a photo op with the eagle and the hunter.

So we took things in our own hands. After a failed search in a Kazakh town where some villagers offered to drive us to a local eagle festival 5 minutes away for the price of a full tank of petrol, we bowed out and declared that we would head back to the city via the local bus. It was on this bus that we met 17-year-old Umyt, who was curious when she heard us speak English and was eager to practise with us. As it turned out, her father Elik was an eagle hunter and she invited us to spend time with them.

Yes, we got the photo with Elik and his eagle but far more precious than that, we experienced the Kazakh new year with them, saw how they lived their daily lives, learned how they made beshbarmak, and even cooked for them in return!

And that is how we travel, regardless of whether we’re in rural Mongolia, cosmopolitan Japan or vast Indonesia. This insistence to travel in a hyper-local way has ensured that we always learn more about local culture beyond the tourist guidebooks and also helped us lower our travel costs, allowing us to go further, deeper and for longer.