In the past I had already met nomads on trips to Iran and Tibet [1]. These nomads lived in tents, while in Mongolia they live in gers. Most people associate the term nomads with a group of people who somehow aimlessly but romantically wander through a vast area of land, together with their livestock. Perhaps the reason for this misconception is the migration of the Israelites through the desert in the Old Testament.
Wikipedia defines: „A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas.“ [2] I visited pastoral nomads, who move from summer to winter pastures and they do so twice a year, often to exact the same places. They have to stick to this pattern as „mobility is the most efficient strategy for exploiting scarce resources“. If possible they stay close to roads or better tracks as they use trucks, cars, and motorbikes nowadays. They still use horses, but I've seen more herders on motorbikes to drive livestock.
I visited nomads in the Orkhon valley (Орхон голын), which extends along the Orkhon river (Орхоны хөндийн) about 320 km west of Ulaanbaatar. The reason for this is that Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape (Орхоны хөндийн соёлын дурсгал) has been „inscribed by UNESCO in the World Heritage List as representing the development of nomadic pastoral traditions spanning more than two millennia“ [3].
The driver went to asked in the ger, if it was possible to visit the family. In the meantime I watched the tethered horses. The poles looked more like the singing wire in old wild west stories. And yes, these horses were picked for riding. The herders use a noose at a pole, which is called urga (урга) [4], to catch horses or other livestock. The horses are used a couple of days for riding and then are released back into the herd and other horses are picked for this duty.
You can see stove pipes at the top of the gers [5]. One would not have to heat the ger during summer, but it is used for cooking milk to evaporate the water. Lets stay with milk for a while. The family owned horses, cattle, sheep and goats. They didn't have camels as the Orkhon valley isn't the desert. I don't know why they didn't have yaks as they thrive there (altitude about 1800 m) as well as all the other livestock [6]. Mare's milk (and camel milk) is used for the fermented airag (айраг), whereas other milks are used for aaruul (aаруул), a Mongolian curd cheese, or the dried and hard khuruud (хурууд). Some curd products are eaten immediately while others are prepared to be stored as the milk season doesn't last all year long (in pastoral societies). Traditionally the aaruul was sliced and then dried by sun and wind on the roof of the ger.
We met the head of the family and were invited into the ger. I forgot to put down his name and the driver didn't remember, when I asked him later. The herder looked after his granddaughter (2 years) and his nieces (8 and 10 years old) as his wife was preparing a wedding in Ulaanbaatar (about 400 km away). His youngest daughter was out to milk the mares. She had just graduated from university with a degree in food technology. The foals are bound near the ger and the mares can roam and look for grass and herbs and return to feed their foals and then are also milked. During summer more milk is consumed and during winter more meat. Meat is usually cooked and the nomads don't eat the young, but rather raise them.
The stove is fired mostly with wood nowadays, gone are the days of collecting and drying dung; though I would not insist on this for remoter areas, which the tourist wouldn't see. They use modern utensils. Some gers have refridgerators powered by solar energy.
The grandfather is still an active man, who won horse races. One could see this near the place of worship in the ger. The family also had an old scripture framed and behind glass, which somehow had survived the iconaclasm during socialistic rule.
I could also sniff at his snuffbox, a ritual to be observed. I'm gratious and very happy having had this chance to look into a traditional ger and not only the gers in the camps for tourists.
Links and Annotations:
[1] https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2018/08/visiting-nomads-in-tibet_27.html and
https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2018/11/nomads-in-iran-2018.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomad
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkhon_Valley
[4] Urga (урга) meaning lasso is synonym with Urga, the old name of Ulaanbaatar, which then means palace. Also it's the name of a famous Mongolian movie.
[5] For more on gers / yurts: https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2022/10/mongolia-staying-in-ger.html
[6] In the Himalaya region yaks wouldn't thrive well so low, but they do so in Mongolia.
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