To share the daily life with Mongolian nomads is an outstanding experience. It’s like passing through into another dimension: welcome into a world where nature is queen!
Mongolia is a very beautiful country with a wide range of landscapes but let’s imagine: a meandering river in a valley covered with steppe and surrounded by mountains with a coniferous forest, natural landscapes with bright colours as far as your eye can see. It’s a sunny afternoon in August, the temperature is between 15 and 20°C, the air is fresh. Only a few hundred meters away from you, herds of cows, yaks and horses, flocks of sheep and goats are quietly grazing in the wild, without paying attention to you.
It seems you are alone in this magical scenery, but there is a white yurt in the middle of this relaxing landscape. Enhtuya and Batbayar live here during this season with their cattle (they’ll move to another place in some months when the animals won’t have anything to graze on anymore). They use river water and a solar panel brings them the energy they need.
Enhtuya and Batbayar are stockbreeders and live in harmony with their environment. They take care of the animals throughout their life: they take them to the places where there is grass, they help them in case they are pregnant or ill, they bring them shelter in winter to protect them from the Siberian cold, their guard dog protects them from the attacks of wolves in the night… In return, they take a part of the milk to drink and make milk products (creams, yoghurts, milk alcohol, cheese, salted tea with milk...) and use each part of their body to eat or to make clothing or tools: meat, leather, fur, bones...
The limited space of the yurt (which is at the same time a living-room, a kitchen and a bedroom) force nomads to optimize the number of goods and their arrangement. In this simple life, they lack nothing and nothing is unnecessary. In other words, nothing is wasted, whether in terms of food, goods, words, or even gesture.
When they need something from nature, for example water for the kitchen or some wood for the stove, they systematically ask nature’s permission to take it (and they give it back if they don’t need it anymore). Actually, if they often have a Buddhist altar in the yurt, they also strongly believe in the animist religion of “blue sky”. Its name comes from Tengri (“Sky”), the most important deity. But natural spirits are everywhere: mountains, rivers, trees or animals are sacred. Nomads give offering as milk to them and they have lots of rules or rituals to follow. The cosmogony of Mongolian nomads links together natural spirits and mankind.
The hospitality and the way of life of these proud stockbreeders lead anyone to make think about what is really essential in their daily life.
My piece of advice: if you want to share the daily life with Mongolian nomads in a genuine way, I invite you to contact the small travel agency "Azur Travel Mongolia".
The French-Mongol couple which is in charge of this agency will know how to make your travel unforgettable: tested and approved!
Their website is in French, but I'm sure Olivier and his wife can also speak English :-)