It was our first day on our 12-day tour of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert and the Central plains. We were perched on a small rock formation in the middle of nowhere in the Northern Gobi Desert at a nomad family’s ger camp, watching the sunset over the small cluster of white gers in the horizon. The setting sun colored the sky with a pink and orange glow, casting a shadow on the majestic horses grazing in the distance owned by our nomadic hosts, roaming free like wild animals, as all animals do on the great Mongolian Steppe. But instead of smiles on our faces, we were filled with a confused sense of negativity for the past hour. This isn’t what we had wanted. Well actually, let me rephrase. This is exactly what we wanted, but we didn’t know it at the time and couldn’t see clearly due to our preconceived expectations of what a tour in Mongolia should be, and what we envisioned living with nomad families would be like. And so began our lesson of incredible importance in the middle of nowhere in Mongolia’s bare, vast Gobi Desert about the power of expectations … … More How Expectations Kill your Trip (…and everything else in life)