Meet the Girl Who Lived in a Truck on Mongolia’s Coal Freeway

The Gobi Desert is residence to Mongolia’s largest coal basins, that are crucial to the nation’s industrialization. Impossibly lengthy and desolate stretches of street join coal mines within the Gobi to China, and 1000’s of truckers journey alongside Mongolia’s coal highway ferrying treasured carbon masses. Considered one of these truckers is a lady named Maikhuu Sengee, in any other case generally known as the “Girl of the Gobi.”

Go watch this documentary on Aeon about her life on the street as one of many solely girls — if not the one one — who’s spent years away from household to drive a loaded truck throughout the desert. Put aside about 25 minutes to comply with Maikhuu by way of the lens of filmmamer Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig. I swear it’s price it:

The documentary, titled The Girl of the Gobi after Maikhuu herself, particulars how Mongolia has undergone large migrations because it went from an agrarian society to an industrialized one. The nation’s assets, together with coal, have been exported to its southern neighbor China for many years.

This circulation of products and wealth pulled the folks of Mongolia towards city facilities and the desert alike. Maikhuu’s household stayed behind within the capital of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, whereas she went south to the Gobi Desert, then additional nonetheless to the Chinese language border. However the international pandemic made life virtually inconceivable for a lot of truckers, who deserted their large rigs within the desert and moved on.

However Maikhuu stayed; the trucker lived out of her cab for days and weeks at a time, between stretches of dwelling in quarantine camps as she made her technique to and from the border of Mongolia and China. She’d been a hairdresser earlier than changing into a driver, and the documentary follows Maikhuu whilst she helps fellow truckers out with a haircut every now and then.

The truck drivers eat, sleep, bathe and wash garments at makeshift truck stops like nomads who shepherd machines by way of the desert. Maikhuu’s journey sees her oscillate between the enjoyment of driving by way of Mongolia’s coal freeway — a street that’s introduced life to many, and has been her personal life for the final seven years — and the disappointment of being removed from residence on a street that by no means ends.