After two days of horse trekking through taiga forest, you emerge into a clearing to find uurts among larch trees and reindeer moving through the undergrowth. This is where the Dukha people live.
The Rara Avis Team
After two days of horse trekking through taiga forest, you emerge into a clearing to find a cluster of uurts, the conical structures rising like winter against dark larch. Reindeer move through the undergrowth, their breath visible in the cold air, their bells soft and distant. Smoke rises from the crown of the nearest uurt into a sky that feels impossibly clear. The effort of getting here — the two flights, the hours of driving north from Mörön, then days on horseback through forest where the light changes moment by moment — is not prologue. It is essential preparation for understanding where you have arrived.
The Dukha, though Mongolians call them Tsaatan, from the word for reindeer, are ethnically and linguistically Turkic, related to peoples scattered across Siberia. They arrived in this forest centuries ago, following routes established long before Genghis Khan. There are somewhere between two hundred and five hundred of them, depending on the year and how they are counted. They live in two groups, East and West Taiga, organised by family, kinship, and the knowledge of where to find the reindeer.
Unlike reindeer-herding peoples of Russia and Siberia, the Tsaatan do not slaughter their reindeer for food. The reindeer are partners in an ancient arrangement. A family's herd, ranging from twenty to two hundred animals, is identity rather than inventory. The reindeer provide milk, made into cheese and yogurt that stores through winter. They provide transport. They are ridden, though this requires remarkable patience and specific gentleness. The animals are trusted with the family's existence.
The uurts are perfect responses to the environment. The structure is deceptively simple: a wooden lattice frame, khana, which can be assembled and disassembled in under an hour. Roof poles extend from the base to a central crown, the toono, an opening serving simultaneously as chimney, window, and door to the sky. The whole structure can be loaded onto a pack animal and moved to the next seasonal pasture.
Inside a uurt, the world is ordered according to principles unchanged for generations. The door faces south. The hearth is at the centre. The khoimor, the place of honour, sits at the north directly opposite the door. Men traditionally occupy the west side; women's space and kitchen occupy the east. A guest invited to the khoimor is being granted the highest honour.
The Dukha have their own spiritual traditions, rooted in shamanism. The shaman serves as healer, intermediary with the spirit world, and keeper of memory. Shamanic practices are woven through daily life. Respect for the spirits of the forest, the animals, the ancestors, shapes how the family moves and what they do.
The two decades since international visitors first began coming to the Tsaatan have been complicated. Income has helped. But careless tourism has disrupted in ways still being felt. It is possible to visit responsibly, to arrive as a guest rather than a consumer, but it requires intention and the right guide.
Rara Avis has maintained relationships with Tsaatan families for many years. The visits are organised with community protocols embedded from the start: guides who are known to the families, groups of manageable size, clear agreements about photography and time, direct payment to families. The journey is demanding. It should be.