Louisa Waugh, Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia

Louisa Waugh's Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia brought to life the characters, the countryside, the weather and Louisa herself. It is one of the easiest and most enjoyable reads I have ever had. I have laughed out loud while reading it on the London underground and got some very strange looks!! Louisa has a very special gift for making this story come to life and for the reader to get to know the main people she writes about. Truly inspirational. I will keep recommending this book. Well done Louisa.

By the time Waugh was ready to set out from Ulaanbaatar to discover rural Mongolia she was well versed in the language and culture and probably felt quite self-assured. That she was immediately propelled into an alien land attempting to teach English to Kazakh's and Tsengel Tuvans in the western-most Bayan- lgii aimag (province), where Mongolians are a minority in their own country, sets a scene of contrasts and conflicts between the people living there, the weather that each season brings, the city-paced life that she left behind and her expectations of what to expect. Inevitably, as is usually the case when things don't work out as expected, what we get is a voyage of personal discovery, but unlike many other travelogues, we get a fairly modest account of her own struggle to adapt, while gaining an understanding of the people and other animals around her and their mechanisms for survival. She expertly paints a striking picture of harsh conditions and an impossible climate, sharing her discomfort without self-pity but with a healthy sprinkling of humour and self-derision: she pees on her foot in the morning and walks around with it frozen to her all day; death stares her in the face but she learns to respect the disconnected attitude of her companions. But although apparently so different and rough, it is also a beautiful place with beautiful people with all the daily problems shared by people across the globe. Waugh was awarded the inaugural Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize for "Hearing Birds Fly"; it is a skillful, gentle paced insight into a foreign but familiar land.