Rancid with ten days of sweat on our backs, we cross the river by ferry at the head of the lake. The ferry man is licked on Russia’s finest and extorts a 2500 tug toll for the passage. The ferry operators are a hardened outfit who take payment of livestock from locals who cannot afford the toll. As the cold river swirls below the wooden ferry, we hold our horses steady by the bits. A man fires up his motorcycle engine and lurches off the ferry onto the track and winds his way up towards Tsaaganuur. Our guide tells tales of the fear conjured by the Tsaatan nomads. Tales of theft and murder. in the hardest of winters when it drops 50 below zero and they are shivering in their teepees with no flour or meat to eat, desperate Tsaatan have been known to leave the forest and raid homesteads on the steppe often stealing herds of cattle from Mongolians. One such story goes that an outfit of reindeer herders came in from Russia bearing rifles and knocked out a whole family before marshalling their herd back north to the taiga (forest).
The reason our guide, a gentle man with an easy smile and hardened hands ( he rode ten days with a fresh bone deep knife wound to his finger) is friends with the Tsaatan families is because he fears them. When they come down to the steppe during hard times and beg for flour, he obliges them. He is a kind hearted fellow. In turn they greet him on their land and this is why we were able to access the most remote reindeer families in the forest.
Tales turn to the recent news of a dead Scandinavian fisherman found in the river near here. He had strayed from the tourist settlement and allegedly slipped and drowned. One time two Mongolian geologists went missing in the taiga. Their skeletons were found two years later. they had been shot. It is clear that mineral prospectors are not welcome here. Another point - Russian border patrol have the right to shoot anybody who crosses the border illegally. We were camped 2km from there and our company were moving secretly through the hills seeking out precious stones for the Chinese market.
Such myths as the Almas add to the mystique of this land, but the daily stories of death become as common place as drinking a cup of vodka. This is a dangerous and wild land. I’d like to stay longer.
