Mongolia – With nomads below the Tsambagarav Glacier

 

Khovd (Ховд) is a small town. It has about 30,000 inhabitants. On its edge, a shanty town of gers (yurts) grows from people who sold tjheir cattle and left their pastures to seek their fortune elsewhere. We drove via Bayan-Enger on the road to Ölgii in the Tsambagarav Uul National Park. This national park covers about 1,110 square kilometers including Tsambagarav mountain, which is giving the park its name and stands 4,192 m tall. The park has a notable population of snow leopards; of course we didn't see one. We drove over rough terrain up to about 2,600 / 2700 m altitude and pitched our tents there.

The "busdriver"

The next day we wanted to visit a nomad family. As we started walking, a middle-aged man approached us with a steering wheel. We misunderstood at first because we assumed he was drunk, but he wasn't. The man had fallen from a horse when he was four years old and suffered a serious head injury. Now he thought he was going to drive a bus. And with this bus we drove to the ger of an elderly couple who were not related to him. He also got stuck with his bus at a difficult spot, drove back and forth until he drove us safely to the ger. The elderly couple spoke particularly freely about their situation. For example, she suffered from high blood pressure. And since I'm a doctor, I measured her blood pressure, which was too high. So I adjusted the medication. Then she mentioned that one of their sons is a doctor and a granddaughter is also studying medicine. However they hoped that one of their sons would take over the animals and resume life as a nomad. We hoped that her wish will come true. They don't want to live in a city. They want to grow old as nomads. The woman's brothers are in the neighborhood, but they were already over 60 years old. Last winter had been particularly tough, but they had hay so they got the animals through. Summer took a long time coming, which also explains why they only set up the ger here a few days ago. The winter pasture is about 150 km away. You can cover this distancet quite well in a day with a pickup truck, but the animals had to be driven all the way.

They reported that for a kilogram of beef costs 20,000 Tukri. But the middleman only pays about one million tukri for one cow. That's actually not enough for the work that was put into it. Wool hardly contributes to their income. A sheep costs about 100,000 tukri.

Dughter in law and grandson

We wished the couple good luck and this time we didn't take the bus back to our tents.

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Mongolia – Nomads in the Orkhon Valley

 

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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Nomads in Iran 2018

 

Typical tent of the nomads

There are nomads in Iran and you can still find them. As I pointed out in my account on the nomads in Tibet, they also try to stay near roads as they use trucks to carry tents and belongings. Maybe having access to reception for their cell phones plays a role, too. They may own a house or a shed somewhere besides the tents, but they have to migrate because of uncertain rain and grass for their life stock, mostly sheep and goats. Not all nomads are pastoralists, though.

In the photographs you will notice that they also have to bring water.

I think that the people you see in my pictures belong to the Bakhtiari (بختیاری‎), who are a southwestern Iranian tribe, [which is the region, where I took the pictures. They speak Bakhtiari, which is a dialect of the Lurish language. Daughter in Farsi is doxtar (دختر), in German Tochter, in Bakhtiari dōder and in Minjai (another Lurish dialect) duxter. So the language is Indo-European.

Maybe you have heard about the Iranian actress Behnoosh Bakhtiari (بهنوش بختیاری‎).

15 years ago in preparing a journey to Iran, we watched the famous documentary Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925), which tells “the story of the migration of Bakhtiari tribe from winter quarters in Khuzestan to summer quarters Chahar Mahaal”. The movie is available on DVD.

 

A hearty greeting

 

Different tent sites in lonelier regions

 

 

Near a gas station

 

A successful pastoralist

 

 

The daughters of the pastoralist

They took my photograph, too 

 

 

Tents, water container, pick-up, motor-bike, bike ...

Links:

https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2018/08/visiting-nomads-in-tibet_27.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakhtiari_people

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/10/iran-nomad-tribes-fading-away/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luri_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_(1925_film)

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