Tsaatan, the last free men of Mongolia

This is the extreme North of Mongolia, a wild and icy region away from the rest of the world. A hostile universe where temperatures can reach minus 45 degrees in winter. This is the territory of the Tsataan, one of the last nomadic people to travel on the backs of reindeer.

Uve and Chander are visiting their brother, who lives isolated in the mountains. To reach them, they have to cross this huge frozen lake. That's the sound of the ice contracting and expanding continuously throughout the day.

As for the reindeer used to walking on the snow, the crossing is almost acrobatic. The two men have been crossing the mountains and snowy passes for two days now. Their brother lives completely isolated in the heart of the taiga in this simple tipi.

Huluk is 30 years old and spends winters here with his family. His wife Hulan and their three children. Nana, six years old.

His sister, Sula, three years old. The youngest, Batah, is just one year old. Huluk and his family are nomads.

Like old Tsataan, they live in tipis with no comforts and only a stove for heating and cooking. The family lives in a space of barely 10 square meters, which Hulan is very proud to introduce to us. The Tsataan are reindeer herders.

Huluk owns 40 of them. Like old Tsataan, he has developed a special bond with them. His brothers have come to help him.

Once a year he has to cut the antlers off of the reindeer. If they didn't cut them off, the antlers would fall off naturally anyway at the end of winter. All of the antlers will be sold and then exported to China, where they're used for traditional medicine.

Huluk and his family are among the last Tsataan. Today, there are only 200 of them left in Mongolia away from the modern world. However, their traditional way of life is being threatened, now more than ever.

However, Tsataan live in the very North of the country, right next to the Russian border, in a vast uninhabited, and largely inaccessible region. This isolation has allowed them to preserve their traditions. They are originally from Siberia and still live, as their ancestors have always lived moving through the taiga with their herds, summer and winter, in search of lichen to feed their reindeer.

Animalists believe that spirits hide behind everything and every living being, and that the shaman is the bridge between them and this invisible world. Few in number, the Tsataan want to avoid any risk of consanguinity. Young men are encouraged to find a wife outside of their community.

For the first time in years, two Tsataan will get married this summer, an exceptional event. However, now all of those traditions are being threatened. Technology is sneaking its way inside the tipis.

It's hard to escape the temptations of the modern world. Here we have the school. For 15 years, the Mongolian state has obliged all Tsataan children to attend school from the age of seven.

A law that forces families to separate during the winter. At the other end of the steppe, a striking contrast. Here is the capital of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, with its modern buildings.

Murun is Tsataan. She's 19 years old and left her family's tipi to come here and study. For a year through winter and summer, we spent our time getting to know these unknown and fragile people, a surprising dive into a preserved and timeless universe that is now being threatened.

To reach the Tsataan, we traveled more than 1,000 kilometers across the step. Three days of travel across chaotic roads and tracks. We also crossed bridges over rivers, which didn't always inspire confidence in our driver.

Hours of driving without meeting another soul. There weren't any signposts here or telephone networks. Suddenly, at a bend in the road, in the middle of nowhere, in a forest full of larches, a truck came to a stop.

It has been stuck here for 24 hours with a group of travelers, including four women and a small child. Saved by the tools and skill of our driver. Without his intervention, who knows how much longer the passengers would have had to wait stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Finally, after the last bridge, we arrived in Saginaw, the northernmost village in Mongolia. There are some scattered houses at the edge of a huge lake, home to 1,200 inhabitants. Their last stop before entering the world of the Tsataans.

After the village, the road became less and less navigable. We had to abandon our all-terrain vehicle and continue on horseback. Mongolian riders helped us cross the steep mountains and reach our destination.

A valley at an altitude of 2,000 meters where the Tsataan gather to spend the summer. They live in tipis, in small groups, in camps located just a few kilometers apart from one another. Each family has its own herd of reindeer.

In the summer season, around 2,000 animals are gathered in the valley. The Tsataan spend four months here from June to September. This is a time for them to rest before the long winter period.

However, for Maksa and Oche, the summer is going to be busy, their eldest daughter has informed them that she wants to get married. This morning the parents are expecting a visit from the future husband's best man who has to make an official request. Maksa the father doesn't seem very well inclined.

The witnesses are coming. Inside the tipi, Oche, the bride-to-be's mother looks cold. The main witness is this man wearing a red dial.

A traditional Mongolian outfit. He has to hunt over a blue scarf symbolizing the eternal sky. If the father accepts, the deal is done.

The witness stands up to make his speech, but this is the exact moment that the parents choose to leave the tipi. The best man begins his speech. He's so nervous he doesn't even realize that the parents are no longer there.

According to tradition, once the proposal has started, the best man isn't allowed to sit down again. Finally, after 15 minutes, the parents return wearing their best tunics. For Maksa, it's a question of pride and honor.

Maksa has to make the bride wait for as long as possible. The longer he waits, the more he proves how important his daughter is. Finally, the father grabs the scarf with the consent of his wife.

The witness can finally relax with a glass of vodka in his hand. This is the signal for the man of the valley. A few days later, everyone gathers to make furniture for the future couple.

The groom-to-be also takes part in the work. At 20 years old, he will leave his parent's tipi for the first time. His fiance isn't involved in the preparations.

She gave birth a month ago. As is often the case among the Tsataan, they wait until they have a child to get married. It is the birth of a child that confirms the seriousness of their romantic relationship.

The wedding will take place in a fortnight, depending on the lunar calendar. In the meantime, life goes on in the valley. A few kilometres away from the parents of the bride and groom to be is Bogue Wieskamp.

She's 42 years old. She was born in the taiga and has always lived there. Her days are punctuated by her beliefs.

Every morning, she prepares tea for her family, and while her children are still sleeping, she performs a shamanic ritual. She offers the first tea of the day to the spirits of nature. The Tsataans are animists.

They believe that spirits inhabit nature and all living beings. They live in communion with their reindeer, to whom they dedicate a particular worship. Like Bogue's husband, they consider it a privilege to look after.

Bogue and her husband have about a hundred reindeer, and some of them even have magical powers and privileges, like this one, who wears multicolored ribbons around his neck and is the only one allowed to enter the family tipi. The reindeer shaman. Bogue follows the customs and traditions of the Tsataan to the latter.

However, she has also started to discover the modern world and its temptations. Next to the tipi, a mysterious yellow tent with an antenna on top, the family's phone box. Thanks to their makeshift antenna, Bogue manages to talk to her eldest daughter back in the village.

However, this morning, there's no time to linger. Bogue has to help with the wedding preparations. All of the women in the valley get together for the occasion.

They even brought out their old manual sewing machines for the occasion. Machines from another age maintained with great care. The women need to hurry because the ceremony will take place and the newlyweds tipi.

That is if the reindeer leaves them enough material. Six days later, the long-awaited moment arrives. The bride, groom, and their witnesses ride white horses.

A lucky color that symbolizes the purity of their union. The couple is dressed entirely in purple and a hundred guests await them. Before entering the tipi, the bride and groom have to ride around it three times, throwing reindeer milk to ensure prosperity and abundance.

Inside, the guests are seated on the floor, eating and drinking. A table of honor has been set up for the parents at the back of the tipi, the most sacred part. Shy and emotional, the young couple doesn't say a word.

The father of the groom gives them a leather lasso, a lucky charm. The bride and groom seal the ritual with a sip of reindeer milk. The bride then has to prove herself to her mother-in-law.

She has to make the tea. By making the tea, she proves that she's capable of feeding her family. As a gift, the young couple received around 50 reindeer, a present from Mabsa, the bride's father.

Outside, the men competed in games of strength: mongolian wrestling in which even the youngest guests take part. The nomads spent all summer long in this high valley where food and reindeer are abundant. However, when winter arrives, everything changes for the Tsataan.

As soon as the first snow falls, the Tsataan take their reindeer further North into the mountains where they can find lichen to defeat the herd. Huluk and his family live here, completely isolated in the heart of the forest, far from any doctor with three small children. They'll spend six months here in this wild region where wolves and bears still live.

At three and six years old, Garner and Zula are already doing some of the housework themselves. The children have divided up their roles. Garner does the heavy lifting and Zula prepares the water for the tea.

At just three years old, the little girl makes a point of doing the dishes by herself. Huluk and Hulan only kill one or two reindeer a year for food. They don't raise them to eat them, but for their milk, which they drink in large quantities.

Hulan has given each of the reindeer a name. In winter, the temperature is between minus 10 and minus 45 degrees centigrade. Despite these extreme conditions, the children spent most of their time outside.

Looking after the reindeer is one of their favourite hobbies. Garner started learning to ride a reindeer when he was one and a half years old. Now, his father takes him to the mountains every day to look after the herd and teach him how to be a herder.

His father has been training him for a year. Garner was brought up in the purest Tsataan tradition, a people who have managed to preserve their beliefs and customs over centuries, even the most mysterious ones. Lost in the middle of the taiga is a small wooden hut.

This is where one of the most feared characters in the community lives. Sinsintic is 61 years old. She's a shaman, meaning she has the power to communicate with the spirits.

This tree keeps its needles all year round. This is a sign that a powerful spirit lives here. Only a shaman has the right to approach it and honor it by hanging ribbons on its branches.

All Tsataan believe in spirits. They believe that spirits live in every being and every living thing. Sinsintic is the link between this invisible world and the human world.

She's one of the Tsataan's three shamans. In the summer, she lives in her tipi. In the winter, she lives in this cabin.

She lives there with her daughter who does the housework. The ofal of an ox killed the day before is laid out on a simple plastic sheet. Her daughter carefully sorts through it.

It is in this cabin that the Tsataan come to consult her. The nomads come here to know their future. How an illness will develop, or where to take their reindeer so that they aren't attacked by wolves.

To answer these questions, the shaman uses ritual objects. Sinsintic always answers very concisely. Her rights are a secret, but she agreed to let us film an exclusive ceremony that evening.

Once a month, she has to contact the spirits so that they can transmit their messages to her. If she doesn't, the spirits might take revenge attacking her or her relatives. The drum symbolizes a horse.

Through this drum, she can travel through the world of the spirits, Sinsintic has to wear a special costume because the spirits will take possession of her body and see our world through her eyes. This long coat will serve as her armor because evil spirits could hurt her or even kill her during her journey. Before each ceremony, her daughter burns juniper.

The shaman invokes the spirits. She gradually goes into a trance. She no longer feels pain.

That's it. The spirits have taken possession of her body. They speak through her in an unknown language and deliver their messages.

The trance lasts for two hours. Suddenly, everything stops. The shaman remains prostrate.

These are her only words. The spirits have given her other messages but she will have to hand-deliver them to the people they belong to. Huluk believes that these traditions are the foundation of the Tsataan identity.

He doesn't want anything to change and he wants his son to be able to live freely in the taiga. However, the Tsataan are becoming less and less isolated as the modern world nestles its way in. Next year, the family's life will change forever.

For the past 10 years, the Mongolian government has made it compulsory for nomadic children from the age of seven to go to school. Next winter, Garner will have to go and live with his mother in Saganua, the only village in the region with a school. The family will be forced to split up.

Hulan knows it. Their nomadic life will never be the same again. From now on, she will spend all of her winters in the village with her three children, far from her husband and her reindeer.

This is the dilemma of the Tsataan people. If they want their children to have an education, they have to abandon their traditional way of life. At the foot of the mountains, in the plains, there's a wooden house made of logs with satellite dishes and solar panels.

To top it off, an all-terrain van. This is the house of Bogue and her family. The woman who lived in a tipi with her shaman reindeer all summer changes her way of life completely in the winter.

She lives alone with her children, while her husband spends the entire winter in the taiga looking after their reindeer. The house is organized like a tipi, a singular space where everyone lives and sleeps, and in the middle, the essential stove. The only notable difference is the television, which captivates the children's attention.

It's Sunday evening. Her daughter Chingwe is getting ready to go to the village for the week, to go to school. Chingwe is almost 13 years old.

She has been going to school for six years. Everyone goes to bed early because we have to leave at dawn tomorrow. However, overnight, the temperature dropped.

The diesel froze in the van, so the men had to heat it with a torch. After several hours of work, the van finally started but Chingwe was very late. The van cut through the steppe and took small chaotic roads when possible.

It took more than three hours of driving to reach Saganua, the village in which the school where the Tsataan children are enrolled is located. Chingwe didn't arrive until 11:00 a. m.

The headmistress was waiting for her. Oyunbadam has been the headmistress of the school for eight years. She's a Tsataan who was born in the taiga and grew up there.

The school has 550 students, including 70 Tsataan children. The courses run from primary school to high school, and you can even find a reindeer in the school hall. In the younger children's class, the teachers often use televisions.

Behind the school is a brand new dormitory. This is where the Tsataan children live during the week. It's all free.

The Mongolian state pays for everything. The student sleeps six in a room. Some stay here for a week, others for months when their parents are too far away in the taiga.

While the children stay at school and the women live near the village, the men go alone to the taiga. It's the period of the great winter transformance, a key moment in the life of the Tsataan. Every year at the end of autumn, the nomads take their reindeer to the mountains in the far North.

They go deep into the taiga to find areas rich in lichen. They have to cross large, snowy spaces and flooded rivers with the constant fear that one of their reindeer will get hurt or die during the journey. To get the spirit's favor, you have to throw three stones on the altar.

The current and the pebbles make the crossing perilous but the spirits are watching and the herd crosses safely. The nomads ride for eight hours a day. Breaks are rare.

Finally, after two days of traveling, they reach their destination. A completely isolated valley rich in lichen, which they have only recently discovered. In one month, 800 reindeer have already gathered here.

They belong to around 15 families. On one of the mountain sides at the edge of the forest, the Tsataan have built this hut. This little house is where the men will spend the winter.

However, before they even unpack their things, the Tsataan had a priority that might seem surprising in the middle of the taiga. They want to build an antenna to try and connect to the telephone network of the village of Saganua, which is a four-day walk away or 70 kilometers. Since they discovered this new mode of communication, the Tsataan can't do without it.

At least when it works. It's impossible to find a connection. The surrounding mountains make a shield, but it takes more than that to discourage the two Tsataans.

The men live here from November to April, taking turns every month to join their families back in the village. Some young Tsataans refuse to endure this uncomfortable lifestyle and prefer to try their luck in the city. Ulaanbaatar, a capital built into the middle of the steppe.

With one and a half million inhabitants, half of the Mongolian population lives here. On the outskirts, poor neighborhoods are made up of small houses and yurts, home to nomads who have come here to find work, and a rapidly growing city center full of modern buildings, glass towers, and traffic jams. A world that Moron, a young 19-year-old Tsataan has only recently discovered.

She left the taiga two months ago to begin her studies. Moron doesn't want to be a reindeer herder. She came here with a dream of becoming a sports teacher.

When she arrived in Ulaanbaatar, she also discovered consumer society. She had never imagined such huge shopping centers existed. Inside, aisles of beauty products, windows full of watches and luxury items imported from the West.

In Ulaanbaatar, Moron benefits from an accommodation reserved for the humblest students. It's located in this building in the city center. She shares a dormitory with five other students.

This bed costs her 20 euros a month. To help the Tsataan, the Mongolian state has decided to pay an allowance to all adults, whether they decide to stay in the taiga or opt for another life. Despite the difficulties, she doesn't regret her choice and hopes that others will follow her example.

Moron will finish her studies in four years, but she told us that she no longer wants to return to live in a tipi in the heart of the taiga. However, surprisingly, she's an exception because today, despite the temptations of the modern world, most young Tsataan people want to continue with tradition and remain like their ancestors. The guardians of the last reindeer in Mongolia.