a crab

Found on the beach near Kaseda, this crab was somehow not so shy. Actually, the father of Kozy told me that this species (which has a claw bigger than the other one) is very rare in this region.

background sound

Summer means often cricket and cicada (cigales) sounds everywhere. But in Japan, it's not sound, it's almost noise ! The cicada are really loud in Kagoshima area, wake you up at 7 a.m....and when you see the local cicada, well, you understand. It's really huge !

When the cicada grows, he changes his "skin" like a snake. We could see many cast of skin on trees or walls. You can almost believe that it's a real animal.

Trip to taiga : the Tsaatan people

The Tsaatan people are ethnically tuvan and have been stuck in Mongolia during the second world war. They are quite few, about 300, still living nomadically in the taiga in winter or on higher places in summer. The summer camp we visited had about 25 families, spread sometime far from each other.


The summer tipi that our host family used is bigger than the winter one but some people still use the winter one in summer. The height of the winter's one is just enough to stand up in the middle.
The oven is always in the center. As the temperature was like winter in Switzerland or Japan, there was always a fire to heat the tipi.

Dried reindeer meat. In opposition to most of the reindeers herders in the world, the Tsaatan rarely eat their reindeers. They will sometime slaughter an old reindeer and dry its meat to keep it as long as possible.

The reindeer milk is very precious to make cheese (which tastes almost like Emmenthal !) or butter. We both liked it very much.

The boy of the host family was specially shy but very friendly with his reindeers.

Trip to taiga : the reindeers

The Tsaatan people are the only reindeers herders of Mongolian. They have about 50 reindeers for each family, which is actually a few to survive only from them. The families must move regularly to find new pasture fields for their animals, who eat mostly lichens.
The reindeers often stay around the tipies (the houses of Tsaatan people).

Even sometime, they want to enter the house !

Some of them had huge antlers !

This baby still has to wait a little bit for antlers.

Domestic deers are pretty familiar with humans, more than other domestic animals that we saw in Mongolia. For example, they love to lick your hands because they are a little bit salty. The Tsaatan also give them regularly salt this way.

Look at their strange feet ! The nails make a funny "clicking" sound when the reindeer walks. The voice of the reindeer is also strange. It sounds maybe like a depressive wild pig.

Trip to taiga : on the way

To reach the west camp of Tsaatan people, you must be really brave: after about 35 hours of car on bumpy roads, there's still 8 hours of horse, in a muddy and stony forest, mountains and cliffs. For second time on horse for us, it was a little bit intense !

But Kozy enjoyed it very much !

Tea break

How camels are useful

- they can turn the wheel which bring up water from the well for the other animals. They will then drink about 40 to 60 liter in one time !

-... and they will carry 30 liter back to the guer without any problem.

Petrogryphs

Another things not to miss are the rockpaintings very close from Chandmani. You have to know where it is because it's not at all indicated and quite subtle...
Some people say that these drawings are between 2000 and 3000 thousand year old. It seems that there were much more trees because the artists painted a reindeer !

Spring babies

Now is the season of baby goats. Since there's a lot of goats here, of course babies are even more ! And they welcome you with "meeee meee" chanting.


Carole couldn't resist to take one in her arms.

And somewhere around, camels were enjoying sun close from a pond. They look like kings of steppes because nobody eats them.
Look the smile !

Cow on town

We often see cows wandering in Khovd city...