30 January 2026, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2999: Yurts and Huts

This post was inspired by today's 5-minute writing prompt in the Freewriters Community - LINK

Enjoy !

Image by Catherine from Pixabay

We think of mobile homes as a modern thing. Shiny and expensive camper vans with every modern convenience; kitchenettes, satellite TV, sometimes even showers and toilets (although these always feel like a bit of an embarrassing afterthought).

Or perhaps we think of something which would be far better described as a chalet. A structure about as mobile as me after a big meal, anchored by tethers of pipework for water, sewage and electricity.

But mobile homes are almost as old as humanity itself. As soon as we learned to harness the muscle power of draught animals, long before horses, we invented the wheel and had oxen and asses pulling carts across the Eurasian landmass. It wouldn't have been a far stretch from carrying tents and having to pitch them every stop, to just having a structure on the back of the cart you could sleep in.

The Mongols carried yurts with them, and some (at least for the more important leaders) were transported permanently set up on the backs of great wagons. I wouldn't be at all surprised (although I don't know for sure) if the Huns, descendants of the Hsiung-nu driven west from China's borders, had the same arrangement.

By early medieval times, the Romanies and travelling merchants all had colourful wagons they used as home.

But of course the most famous of them all was Baba Yaga's Hut. The ultimate mobile home, it walked on hen's legs whenever she needed to be somewhere. Not as fast as her mortar and pestle, but it carried everything she needed. An awesome and terrifying mobile home !