It’s milking time. Again. All hands on deck. The women of the Kazakh nomad community in Western Mongolia are in all-out commando mode. Their tongues click and arms wave as they chase their herds of goats and sheep into a pen. Hundreds of hooves dart this way and that, swirling and spinning, trying to avoid what’s […]

I remember musing that an American wedding planner would think I’d lost my mind. Wrestling? You want wrestling at your wedding?! Her shock giving way to complete bewilderment and horror when I followed up with…..and, we’ll want a horse race too. A Kazakh Wedding Tradition: The Wrestling Begins I scanned the celebration and grinned.  This […]

We sit on the ground around a low wooden table waiting for the day to begin. It’s overcast, threatening rain, and the ger is dim, throwing everything into monochrome. A pot of boiling milk sits on top of a battered wood-burning stove in the center of the room, and I watch as steam rises into […]

It’s been a while since my adventure in western Mongolia with photographer Timothy Allen and seven fellow photography lovers, and yet I still think of it all the time. We camped in the Altai Tavan Bogd National Park, a vast and profoundly beautiful and pristine expanse where we met the world’s most tolerant and gracious […]