Raise your hand if you are already aware of my dislike for flying. Good. Every hand is raised.

I flew to Mongolia last week. Ulaanbaatar is the capital and it sits in the middle of nowhere. Well, to be fair, the whole country of Mongolia is sorta in the middle of nowhere. It’s a large country that only has about 2.5 million people. Once you take off from the Beijing airport you immediately begin flying over the mountain range to the north and then there is virtually nothing below you except mountains and desert all the way to Ulaanbaatar. As we approached Ulaanbaatar i never saw any signs of the city. I saw desert. I saw mountains. I saw fog. i saw the sun. We started our descent. Our decent into where? The sand? The mountains? I have no idea. I was looking out the window noticing how close we were getting to the mountains and the sand below and i thought, “This is not good.” I looked off into the distance and saw nothing except white fog covering the ground below. Maybe the city is below the fog. I don’t know. We continued in our descent. We got closer and closer to the fog and still no signs of a city. No buildings, no cars, no suburban areas. Still just sand and mountains. I don’t know all the technical terms for flying, but i know those special things that make the wings bigger so they catch more air were fully extended. We were near the ground now. Landing gear was down, and touchdown was imminent. You know those last few moments before touchdown where the nose comes up a little to slow the plane? Yeah, we were at that part. Oh, and we’re still in the fog. Now i can’t see the ground or the sky above. It’s eerie. And then… full throttle, my whole body is pushed against the seat, the nose of the airplane goes up and in an instant we’re back high above the clouds. It felt like a roller coaster. We made a big right turn and i thought, “Cool. Landing is bad enough already, but i guess we’ll go back for round two.” 30 minutes later i notice that we’re still at cruising altitude. Then the announcement, “We’re returning to Beijing.” Great. So to make a long story short, we get back to Beijing, refuel the plane, and fly back to Ulaanbaatar and finally make a safe landing. And when i say “safe” it just means i have disregarded the potholes in the runway.