Horses in Mongolia

Everywhere we look there are horses and for Mongolians they are very important things - they mark their wealth and are also the source of fermented mare's milk. The horses are also raced - with child jockeys and do enormous distances (up to 3okm). We met some vets from Ulaan Baatar who said that their is a custom of not giving your horse a drink after a race and that they often drop dead from heat exhaustion. They were gradually changing the habit by showing that these valuable horses drop dead less often if they get a chance to drink and therefore sweat. We got surprised by one race as it just spead past us taking any available route across the hills - only some of the horses actually using the road:

 More often the horses are just up in the hills grazing the high pasture:

Mongoliaontheroad