Photo Essay: Mongolia’s Nomads

A stunning picture of a celebration in Mongolia. Oddly, they do the same thing in Thailand. Not sure where this custom started.

Buddhist Art News

Global Oneness Project
By Taylor Weidman

Mongolian pastoral herders make up one of the world’s last remaining nomadic cultures. For millennia they have lived on the steppes, grazing their livestock on the lush grasslands. But today, their traditional way of life is at risk on multiple fronts. Alongside a rapidly changing economic landscape, climate change and desertification are also threatening nomadic life, killing both herds and grazing land. Due to severe winters and poor pasture, many thousands of herders have traded in their centuries-old way of life for employment in mining towns and urban areas. Most herders who stay on the steppe push their children to pursue education and get jobs in the cities believing that pastoral nomadism is no longer a secure or sustainable way of life.

This essay features a selection of images from the book, Mongolia’s Nomads: Life in the Steppe, sold by the Vanishing Cultures…

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