The joy of yaks

The Mongolian taiga

After driving across clean, fast rivers and through forests turning golden, orange and red in the Mongolian autumn, we came upon herds of yaks grazing the taiga. The yak, or Tartary ox, is the Shetland pony of cattle, as drawn by Norman Thelwell: not much higher than a big ram at the withers, with a low-slung, fat body, an overcoat of long, shaggy hair, a woolly head and a dangling mop of a tail. The herd we alighted from our car to see was being driven down from wooded slopes by a youth riding his pony bareback, whistling and singing. As the yaks, all white and brown and black, trotted towards us, they gave out grunts reminiscent of wildebeest, but much deeper. They came close to us before they stopped in a semi-circle, grunting and snuffing the air with their wide, flared nostrils.

My Mongolian hosts, Bodio and his wife Munkhtuya, who manufacture fine clothes from yak down, brought me to the taiga to see yaks. As we approached the ger, or felt tent of their yak-herder friends, my heart lifted. Two huge dogs, shaggy black and mahogany, bounded up to greet us. Known as Bankhars, these beasts guard the herders’ livestock against wolves. At the ger to welcome us was a stout man who rejoiced in the name Sodov, with his wife and several children. Reading from my Mongolian phrasebook, I said: ‘I hope your animals are fattening nicely?’ Sodov replied: ‘Сайхан таргалж байна! – Fattening nicely!’