Mongolia Autonomy

Former president Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

I’m six months pregnant, I’ve been riding on horseback across Mongolia for days, and it feels like an age since I last felt my baby kick. I’ve asked to see a doctor and been told one won’t be accessible for days. This is the consequence of autonomy: I’ve done exactly what I wanted, ignored all the warnings, and now all I can imagine is what I would do with myself if something were to happen to my baby.

But as we accustomed ourselves to the Mongol lifestyle—living in a ger (yurt), surrounded by animals, moving from place to place—I soon felt my son kicking more strongly than ever. In this land of the outdoors and setting your own path, something seemed to come alive in him, as it had in me.

This is a way of life that stretches back to the era of Genghis Khan and his descendants, at which time the Mongol Empire was the largest the world had ever seen. A nomadic people stretched itself across over 16 percent of the world’s landmass, greater even than the Russian Empire at its height.

Modern Mongolia may be a small fraction of its former self, but much of the same culture that powered its empire building remains. It is still a nation where the autonomous, self-determining lifestyle of the nomad prevails like nowhere else, stretching across Mongolia’s vast open spaces and grasslands.

Perhaps this mind-set is summed up best by a single word, temul, the basis for the birth name of Genghis, Temujin. According to the historian Jack Weatherford, temul “[occurs] in several Mongolian words meaning to rush headlong, to be inspired, to have a creative thought, and even to take a flight of fancy.”

He continues: “As one Mongolian student explained to me, the word was best exemplified by, ‘the look in the eye of a horse that is racing where it wants to go, no matter what the rider wants.’ ”

The horse is an appropriate symbol for Mongolian autonomy. Although, after Genghis, the wolf is often held as the national symbol, horses are the defining animals of the Mongolian culture and way of life. As the proverb goes: “A Mongol without his horse is like a bird without its wings.” Mongolia built its vast empire on horseback, and horses remain central to nomad culture for hunting, riding for leisure and in competition, and as status symbols. The Mongolian national drink, airag, is fermented mare’s milk, while for a Mongolian child, learning to ride is as much a rite of passage as learning to walk. In Mongolian folk culture, horses are also thought to have spiritual significance; Mongolian warriors were traditionally buried with their horses, and mare’s milk was sprinkled on the ground before a battle. Today, horses are routinely given as diplomatic gifts to politicians and world leaders who visit Mongolia.

Like their horses, Mongolians go where they want, not where others lead. While lots of people might say they have personal freedom, Mongolian nomads truly have the autonomy to choose where to pitch their tent and graze their animals from one day or week to the next.

Many still live in the same gers that have been used for centuries, including in the rapidly expanding capital of Ulaanbaatar. The ger, as an open and mobile space both inside and out, symbolizes something about the autonomy of the Mongolian mind-set: no restrictions on where they take themselves, the freedom to move around, and the free will to determine the course of one’s own life. Indeed, much of Mongolia’s steppe is given to its people for free by the government, with every Mongolian citizen entitled to claim a plot of land as their own without charge. There is something about experiencing the Mongolian environment that fires up the autonomous spirit—the ability to see the whole horizon, be surrounded by openness on all sides, with no check on which way you can go or how far.

The same spirit suffuses Mongolian government. When I met then–Prime Minister Sükhbaataryn Batbold, he told me about how Mongolia was determined to build its rapidly growing “Wolf Economy” on its own terms, and in its own model. This is in contrast to the Asian “Tiger” economies: an economy that, like the wolf, will be strong, clever, and able to survive even the harshest conditions.

Spend any time in the country and you will soon realize that Mongolians are not a people who can be hemmed in, whether by expectations, deadlines, or conventions. The Mongol culture is to explore, to test the unknown, and do the unexpected. To pursue a life defined by autonomy and the opportunity to go where the will takes you. If freedom is often about the battle for shared rights, autonomy is a more personal thing: the ability to set the course of your own life, and to follow your own unique path.

With many of us living lives and pursuing careers that are cased in structure and routines, real and imagined, there can be few among us who would not benefit in some way by embracing a little temul, and the Mongolian urge to be free.