Living with the Reindeer People! www.visittaiga.org

We have just had the most remarkable and amazing week, living and moving with the nomadic Reindeer herding Tsatsuun of Northern Mongolia - the Reindeer People.

While we were at Baikal we met a Turkish freelance journalist called Uluc (uluch) who was travelling on the same train a us to Ulan Bataar (UB), he told us how he was traveling north to write an article on this remote community. We asked if we could join him on his trip and share the costs and he agreed, so within a couple of hours of being in UB we boarded a flight to Murun. When we got there we stayed on nght in a Ger with Patrick (a great guy from Colorado who is working for the Peace Corps and has a liking for Boddingtons) before hiring a driver and taking a 7 hour drive to a small town - us, Ulug and our Translator (Baaska - who became our friend). We spent one night in the town and then had an 8 hour horseride to reach the community. Both the drive and the horseride alone were worth the trip, with stunning scenery as we passed over snow capped mountains and through forests, passing numerous gers and various river crossings.

Along the way we were given the Mongolian names by our guides (so the were easy to pronounce) of Nulla (Sun) and Bataar (Hero).

One we reached the community, which consisted of only10 tee-pees we were invited to stay with a family. We stayed with our Papa and Mama: Gamba and Perue and their son Saloman they were so kind and generous, constantly giving us Reindeer milk tea and bread with the mantra "eat it all". When it came to the evening they were worried about us being too cold and piled us up with blankets so we could hardly move, but we stayed very warm.

The Reindeer are beautiful and are central to their very basic lives and the entire community welcomed us with everyone wearing permanent smiles. We joined in with the community, meeting everyone and visiting all the tee-pees, helping with any chores when we could (sawing wood, collecting water, milking reindeer). We even got to sit with the elder for a couple of hours while he told us their history and we discussed the potential impact of tourism.

We had arranged to spend 3 nights with the Tsataan, and after the 2nd night they were scheduled to relocate to their 'autumn place'. We helped as they quickly dismantled their tee-pees and rode with them for 3 hours over more mountains. Our family was the last to arrive at the new place, and we helped put up the tee-pee in the dark and rain, everyone was wet and cold but the smiles never diminished and we shared one of the nicest moments we had as the stove was stoked and we all sat around drying off and warming up laughing about the plight - no one once though of moaning or complaining.

After our final night of warmth we had to say goodbye, we were asked to return again and promised we would try before we left on horses for our final 8 hour ride, galloping across the plains with the wind in our hair!

It was truly an amazing experience with some of the kindest, happiest and most gracious people we have ever met. Neither words or pictures can do justice to the experience we have shared and we will always treasure it and will hopefully one day return.

We will try and get some photos uploaded as soon as possible.