This is Altein Beigeina a three year old Monolian boy who lives with his semi nomadic family in a Ger in the Arkhangai Province of central Mongolia. For a child, the first big celebration is the first haircut, usually at an age between three and five. Birthdays were not celebrated in the old times, but these days, birthday parties are popular. Wedding ceremonies traditionally include the hand-over of a new Ger to the marrying couple. Deceased relatives were usually put to rest in the open, where the corpses were eaten by animals and birds. Nowadays, corpses are usually buried. Mongolian boy 2015.

Landscape of western Mongolia, 2015.

The Kazakh people are the largest ethnic minority in Mongolia. Numbering over 100,000, they comprise the largest ethnic minority in Mongolia, although only 4% of the total population. The Kazakh population is concentrated in the western province of Bayan-Ulgii, a region physically separated from Kazakhstan by a 47-60 km mountainous stretch of Chinese and Russian territory. Documented Kazakh migration to Mongolia begins in 1840 with many migrants arriving from areas now Western China. Records suggest that in 1905, there were 1370 Kazakh households, increasing to 1,870 households by 1924 (the year Mongolia adopted socialism). By 1989, the Kazakh population grew to approximately 120,000 individuals. Before the fall of the USSR, few Mongolian Kazakhs had ever visited the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, but in the post-Soviet context the creation of new nation states and national borders, relaxation of restrictions on movement and opening of borders between east and west, new population movements have emerged.