A morning mist filled the valley near Hatgal, a small village at the southern tip of Lake Khovsgol in north-central Mongolia. As I looked at the figures among the fragrant pines and larchs, I could hardly distinguish the silhouettes of the reindeer from those of their herders.
Darima Delger, 64, and her husband, Uwugdorj Delger, 66, gathered their belongings and dismantled a rusty stove. They threw a coat over the shoulders of their grandchildren who were already sitting on the backs of their animals. The herd of the family stood still as if in a Flemish painting. Everyone was waiting to leave.
The sound of tent poles clashing — mingled with a whirl of commanding voices — left little doubt: the transhumance to the shepherds’ summer camp was underway.
The family of Darima and Uwugdorj is part of a small group of semi-nomadic reindeer herders known as the Dukha or Tsaatan. Here in northern Mongolia there are only a few hundred left. Their lives revolve around their domesticated reindeer, who provide them with many of their daily needs, including milk (used in tea and to make yogurt and cheese), leather and a means of transport. The velvety antlers of the animals, once removed, are sold for use in medicines and nutritional supplements. Very few of the animals are killed for their meat – maybe one or two a year.
The decision to move the herd was not an easy one. In recent years, Uwugdorj explained, they moved the reindeer about every month. “In reality we followed them,” he said with a laugh. “The reindeer are smarter than us.”
But now the rain and snow cycles are changing, Uwugdorj said. The weather in the taiga, the subarctic forest where the animals thrive, has become less predictable. Lichen, a staple of reindeer’s diet, is particularly vulnerable to climate change. In addition, reindeer populations — which have been negatively impacted by disease, historical mismanagement and wolf predation — have declined.
“If we’re wrong, we endanger the whole herd,” Uwugdorj said, checking the straps of his saddles. Then he jumped on his reindeer and lined the impatient procession along a swath of thick snow.
I could barely keep up with the herd on horseback. Compared to reindeer, horses move like elephants.
Despite his injured knee, Uwugdorj squeezed through the pines and disappeared from view. With Darima and their daughter I searched for the few reindeer that had been weakened by the winter. In between efforts, I watched the looks the family exchanged. Their faces seemed to acknowledge the uncertainty. “If we lose our animals,” Darima told me at one point, “we lose everything.”
Arriving at the new pasture in a pouring rain, the group’s teepee-like tents, called ortz, rose with astonishing speed. About 20 families were migrating.
Darima went out to milk the reindeer. After tying the animals to poles for the night, everyone gathered around a crackling fire.
The Dukha are originally from the Tuva region of Russia, in the north. Tuva was an independent country for many years, until it was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1944. As children under communist rule, Uwugdorj and Darima were sent to boarding schools and had to endure numerous attempts to erase their identities, they said. Uwugdorj remembered that he had escaped from the village at night because it was too hot in the dormitories. “We were hungry, we were cold,” he said. In winter, bits of reindeer hides were boiled to make a broth that he swallowed to survive. Fur went to wealthy customers in the cities.
With their savings, Uwugdorj and Darima built a house in the village of Tsagaannuur, west of Lake Khovsgol, so that their grandchildren could receive a good education.
The next morning, walking through moss and lichen, I met a woman in her seventies who was milking her six reindeer. She told me how dramatically the life of the Dukha changed when the border was redrawn to the north – families were separated, their seasonal migrations were hindered. Many Dukha became refugees in the Soviet Union or Mongolia. “We wanted to escape, she said, “from the people who forbade us to live in the taiga.”
Every summer, a steady stream of tourists — from places like China, Israel, the United States and New Zealand — travel through the taiga to visit the herders. But not all Dukha families benefit from the visitors. Instead, they earn a living by selling antlers and pelts, collecting pine nuts and receiving small grants, although “it is not enough to raise our family,” said Dawasurun Mangaljav, 28, who spoke to me along with her husband. , Galbadrakh, who is 34.
“Strangers think we are free,” Dawasurun said. In fact, she said, money is a constant problem. In summer, Dawasurun and Galbadrakh’s children live with them in the taiga. They go back to school every September, but only if the parents can afford it.
On my last day at the Dukha, I went with Uwugdorj to inspect the herd.
Uwugdorj, who once worked as a hunter for the government, knows the country. The climate, he said, is changing; he can see it. Since the 1940s, average temperatures in Mongolia’s boreal forests have risen by nearly four degrees Fahrenheit, more than twice the global average.
“We are not statues in a museum,” Uwugdorj said. “We are like our reindeer: on the move.”
And their struggle, he added, is to persevere in a world bent on challenging their way of life.
