The carcass of a freshly slaughtered goat lies under the bed in a nomadic family’s ger in Mongolia as the sleeping bags of visitors are rolled out on the floor next to its remains. Its head, with fur and horns intact, lolls in a corner by the door.
The temperature is near freezing, but the felt-lined, wood-lattice structure provides shelter from the blustery winds of the Gobi. The thick portable tent of the typical nomadic home traps both heat and the gamey smells of mutton boiling on the stove and strips of meat hung from the ceiling. Milk in a large cloth sack is left to strain into a metal bucket nearby.
While the Mongolian government relies on the country’s resources such as gold, copper, coal and other minerals to attract foreign investment, some of its nomadic population are offering homestays to supplement their rural incomes, capitalizing on the opening up of their country.
Photo: Reuters
“We are happy to let visitors stay in our ger. In Mongolia, we can drop in on friends and people can visit us without any notice,” said Tovshinto Vaanchig, a 51-year-old horse herder who also owns sheep and goats.
However, getting to the homestays, often in the herders’ own one-room gers, remains tough.
Visitors must endure hours in four-wheel drives on bumpy terrain across sweeping steppes. The landlocked country remains in a time warp, with many of its people living side-by-side with animals and retaining old traditions.
Tour guide Oyunbolor Demberel and her father, Demberel Otgon, rely on tourists who want to see the unspoilt natural wonder of the Gobi’s sand dunes, mountains and steppes for work during a few months each year from May to September.
After a few hours of driving around a region of the desert inhabited by horse herders, Otgon finds a family who have suitably calm, wild horses for tourists. Mongolian children learn to race these small horses when they are about six years old and many are expert riders who use no saddle.
Apart from horses, cows, goats and sheep, Mongolia’s herding economy depends on the hardy, two-humped Bactrian camel which is indigenous to Central Asia.
Enktuya Borokhin, 52, is the matriarch of a camel-herding family. She moved six weeks ago to find pasture for 400 animals and will relocate again in a month in search of better shelter for winter. The Gobi has extreme temperatures, from minus-40?C in winter to more than 40?C in summer.
Borokhin’s tourist ger is spartan, but the walls are decorated with colorful cotton cloth from China. The family moves their only stove into the ger for guests and end up cooking all their hot meals with their visitors.
The daily staple is meat, such as mutton and goat, although Mongolians also eat camel, horse and beef. Milk tea is commonly served with curd and fried biscuits.
They cook a stew by candlelight. As night falls, the camp eases into sleep, lulled by sounds from braying camels to barking dogs.
Borokhin is up at dawn when the sun pokes through the horizon in a soft haze of pink.
Her daughter Gantsetseg skillfully lines up goats for milking behind the gers. The necks of the animals are tied with rope woven so that they are lined up in two rows facing one another. The milk, cheese and other animal produce, including wool, are sold.
Borokhin says she is pleased that three of her children are studying agriculture and technology in the city, while three others have chosen to live in the countryside as herders.
Mongolia does not manufacture substantial amounts of finished goods and cannot sustain economic growth without significant exports of resources to neighboring countries. People who move to the capital, Ulan Bator, are hard pressed to find work and unemployment is a problem.
Bordering Russia and China, Mongolia has a population of about 2.8 million, with less than half living a nomadic life. It is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world and does not have the skill base, the capital nor the capacity to carry out large mining projects without foreign investment.
Tourism is also hamstrung by poor infrastructure.
“I earned good money when I worked for a mining company doing data entry, but these jobs are hard to come by,” said tour guide Demberel, 35.
“We hear stories of people who have found gold and now everyone hopes they too can find gold. The big cars in the cities are owned by those people in mining,” she said.
Even as Mongolia looks forward, the past remains close in the form of legendary warrior Genghis Khan, who established the Mongol empire in 1206. His name is on everything from the capital’s airport to postcards and vodka.
“We don’t have much, but we are a rich country with a long history. In Mongolia, we say that Chinggis Khaan is still feeding us,” Demberel added.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was