Podcast Episode 3
Faith, Hope, and a Bonfire in Mongolia
I’ve traveled through a lot of countries over the years—Europe, Africa, South America—but some of the most unforgettable moments happened in places that don’t often make it onto bucket lists. One of those was Mongolia.
We’d just wrapped up the GS Trophy and decided to stick around a bit longer to explore. The first night, we found ourselves at a yurt camp in the middle of nowhere. Down the hill, there was a bonfire—massive, wild, and buzzing with energy. A few of us wandered down to check it out.
We ended up crashing what turned out to be a full-blown shaman convention.
That night around the fire, we were offered a grain alcohol that was so strong I had to fake drinking it, then tossed the rest into the flames—which promptly exploded. The shamans didn’t seem to mind. They welcomed us in, no questions asked. And standing there with them, under the open sky, I realized that what we were really witnessing was a ritual of faith, hope, and compassion—three things I’ve seen time and again, no matter where in the world I go.
Mongolia wasn’t all magical. There was the usual dose of intestinal chaos that comes from desert heat, bad food, and no shade for miles.
At one point, the only relief I could find was crawling under my bike for a few minutes of shadow. But even in that misery, there was something grounding about being in such a raw and remote place.
On another trip, this time through Colombia, we carried soccer balls to hand out to kids in the Andes. I remember one little girl in particular. She didn’t speak much English, and I couldn’t catch her name, so I started calling her Hope. She didn’t understand the word, but she never left my side for the next two hours.
Hope’s spirit was radiant-clean cloths, dirt-floor home, a mother who came over smiling. That’s the kind of hope you don’t forget.
These places—Mongolia, Colombia, the back roads of Uzbekistan, China, the list keeps going—they’ve taught me that you don’t need much to be happy. In fact, the less people have, the more tightly they hold to what matters: their families, their neighbors, their stories, their faith.
Whether it was the Uigher Muslims navigating oppression in China or the small clans taking care of each other in Central Asia, I saw again and again that people don’t survive without hope—and they don’t thrive without compassion.
The world might be divided by borders, languages, and beliefs, but underneath all that, there’s a shared thread that keeps humanity going.
I’ve learned to look for those threads—faith, hope, and compassion—everywhere I ride. And somehow, they always show up.
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