Filming a Day in the Life of a Mongolian Herder

I wake just as the first light touches the upper opening of our ger, the traditional Mongolian dwelling. The soft bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle drift in Bayankhongor, a province that stretches from the arid Gobi Desert to the high plateaus of the South Khangai mountains.

The air is fresh with a faint scent of smoke—a sure sign that Amraa, true to form, is already up. He’s making cheese on the stove from milk he collected the day before. My friend Marie, still half asleep, who I managed to drag along from Germany for this filming trip, shakes her head in disbelief. “Does Amraa ever sleep? He’s always working.” She’s right. Amraa seems to have an otherworldly level of energy. No matter how early we get up, he’s always already awake.

Every day, we rise to find Amraa immersed in a different task. The first day, he was searching for his horses, which had wandered off in the night. The next, he was shearing sheep. Another morning, he was sharpening his tools; the next, he was fixing the roof of his winter shelter. There’s a good reason why this man holds the title of “State Best Herder,” an honor given to only a few in the country. Amraa didn’t lose a single animal during this year’s dzud, the brutal winter disaster that killed over 7 million animals across the country. “A good herder doesn’t lose his animals, even in a dzud,” he’d say.

I’m the first of the crew to get up—it’s one of the glamorous “joys” of being the director. I head over to the ger where my cameramen are still asleep. Their ger looks like it’s been through a battle, which, technically, it has. Yesterday, while my crew was sleeping, a bull charged straight into it, smashing two of the walls. Gers are assembled with five lattice frames tied together with leather thongs, and while they usually stand up to almost anything (dzud included), bulls are an exception. I’m amazed this ger is still standing at all.

“Up in five minutes! The sun’s almost up!” I shout, and my crew grumble in response. As they slowly pull themselves together, I head over to Amraa’s wife, Tuya, to go over the filming plan, gently reminding her where to stand and look, hoping to ease her anxiety about being on camera. The sky is clear—the first cloudless morning we’ve had—and if we time it right, the footage will be flawless with the sun rising in the background. We’re on a tight schedule—setting up the cameras takes 12-15 minutes, and of course the sun waits for no one.

After we successfully take our first footage of the day, Amraa takes his herd to a salt marsh about 20 miles away. The salt helps the sheep and goats gain weight. Only the fattest survive the winter, and preparation starts early in the summer. Amraa has nearly a thousand sheep and goats to look after. Leading that many animals on a 20-mile journey is no small feat, and the herd moves ever so slowly.

As we film and follow Amraa in our car, I can see the rain clouds coming in the vast steppe. I still have a 30-minute interview planned, but for that to happen, Amraa needs to reach the salt marsh before the downpour. In a mild panic, I jump out of the car, “direct” my cameramen and Marie to herd the sheep from the right with the car, and I chase after the herd myself from the center. The herd begins to move much faster. I’m soon gasping for breath, and my assistant cameraman steps in and takes over. We switch every five minutes, saving about an hour on the journey. That hour just gave me the window I need to sit down with Amraa for an interview.

As we catch our breath, Amraa tells me how hard it’s become to sustain a traditional way of life. “It’s too tough to make a living just herding animals anymore,” he says. I understand why. Amraa spends hours tracking down his horses every day, because they wander farther and farther in search of vegetation. An unusual storm blew through earlier this spring and left his shelters in tatters, which he spent days fixing. He managed to survive the last dzud, yet the next one is coming soon. Dzuds are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change. Amraa knows it’s only a matter of time before even the best herders start losing animals. “I can’t ever imagine the younger generation wanting to live like this,” he says.

We drive another 20 miles to a horse camp, where Jantska, an 11-year-old jockey, is helping train Amraa’s stallion. As we bump along the rough road, Amraa explains that soil erosion has made it impossible to train horses outside his ger anymore. They’ve lost at least 4 centimeters of topsoil over the past few years, he says, as the climate is getting more arid and the soil is getting drier. Rocks are coming up through the ground and injuring the racehorses’ hooves. He now has to travel these 20 miles almost daily just to train the one stallion he’s entering in this year’s summer festival.

At camp, eight horses are tied at a post. Jantska will race every one of them. He knows each horse by name and temperament. When I ask the boy what he wants to be when he grows up, he says, “A racehorse trainer like Amraa.” Becoming a racehorse trainer is such a simple dream, yet it’s heartbreakingly uncertain in a world where this future, this culture, might not even exist.

By the time we wrap up filming, the sun has already dipped behind the mountains. Amraa has long since returned home to help his wife milk horses. On the way back, we lose our way on the dirt roads. “Well, of course,” I think, “things were going too smoothly today.” No car accidents. No bull attacks. No food poisoning. We even managed to avoid the rain.

After searching for the right road for an hour, we spot the only landmark around—a Coke bottle we passed earlier in the day. We cheer, knowing we’re on the right path.

Later that evening, when Amraa finally takes a break, he brings us bowls of fermented horse milk and teaches us a traditional Mongolian finger-guessing game. The loser has to down an entire bowl of the milk, and somehow, Amraa loses over and over again—though I’m fairly certain he’s letting us win. It’s his way of offering hospitality, though it’s us who should be toasting him for his resilience and grace in a world that seems bent on testing him at every turn.