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This is the story of three nomadic tribes of Mongolia which, though they inhabit the same territory, have different cultures and traditions. But with one common denominator, they are all HEIRS OF GENGHIS KHAN.
800 years ago, this man, called Timuyin and better known as Genghis Khan, “The King of the Universe”, managed to create the largest empire ever known in the history of humanity.

It all begin in the year 1190 when Genghis Khan managed to bring together the different nomadic tribes of Mongolia in a single, powerful army of 200,000 men. This, and his undoubted military genius, enabled him to conquer vast territories, stretching from the Pacific to the heart of Europe, and from northern Siberia to India, Iran and Turkey.
His armies – relatively small, highly disciplined, extremely well coordinated and with innovative military skill and great mobility, were organised into “toumans”, a basic formation of 10,000 warriors on horseback. The Mongol hordes lived out in the field and their battle tactics consisted of surprise attacks, charging at the enemy flanks and rearguard before launching heavy cavalry assaults.

With the end of the Khan dynasty, a series of civil wars threw the country into confusion, until, in 1578, Buddhism was established as the form of government, under the leadership of Altan Khaan. Two centuries later, Mongolia came under Chinese control, until 1924 when, with the creation of the soviet bloc, the country converted to communism and became a satellite of the USSR.

With the arrival of the Russians, Mongolia underwent rapid changes, modernising and industrialising. Buildings, bridges, roads, railway lines, factories and schools were constructed…and the nomads looked on in astonishment as, virtually overnight, their country was transformed from a primitive feudal society to the progress of the twentieth century.

Ulan Bator became the new, cosmopolitan capital of this renewed country, designed in accordance with the cold, impersonal urban planning standards of the Soviets. The result is an atmosphere which gives the visitor the impression of having landed in a lost, remote city in Siberia.

But with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, and the consequent disintegration of the Soviet bloc, the Russians left just as quickly as they had arrived, and overnight Mongolia was completely paralysed, suffering political and economic collapse from which it has still far from recovered. Since then, the city has rapidly deteriorated, and its inhabitants struggle to survive as best they can.
The situation in rural areas is also dramatic, and every day hundreds of families arrive in the city, fleeing from poverty and hunger. The new settlements which have been established in recent years have doubled the surface area of Ulan Bator and it is calculated that around forty per cent of the city’s inhabitants still live in “gers”, the houses of the nomads.

But in any case, and despite the great empires, invasions, civil wars and political and social experiments, in the interior of the country few things have changed since the time of Genghis Khan.
On the vast Siberian steppes, where winter lasts for ten months, the life of these nomads is virtually the same as that of their ancestors. The horse is still their means of transport, and they continue to live by cattle-rearing and hunting.

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