Aruna | Nomadic

Every time we haul gear for camping, I recall my parents' years of raising cattle back home in Inner Mongolia after they retired.

In recent years, to protect the grassland ecology, April to November is the grazing-ban period when cattle and sheep can't be free-range and have to be kept in enclosures.

For a period, my parents would graze the animals at night until four or five in the morning. After a lifetime as schoolteachers, they couldn't keep up with years of such toil.

At that time, despite living in Inner Mongolia, they had never experienced true nomadic migration and yearned for it. My dad told me that back then, migration happened once a year, moving from summer camp to winter camp. It took several people a day and a night or more to drive the cattle and sheep, bringing food for the road and moving with the herds toward fertile pastures in search of water and grass.

Just like our current camping: being in nature, carrying the food we need, without signal or phone distractions, two days pass quickly. There's so much to do—setting up the tarp and tent, making fire, cooking, brewing milk tea, paddling, walking in the mountains, watching sunrise, sunset, and the starry sky...

And the one migrating is yourself, heading into the mountains.

Aruna, making a final check of the campsite after a camping trip:

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