Tsagaannuur, Khövsgöl

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Tsagaannuur (Mongolian: цагаануур, white lake) is a sum (district) of Khövsgöl Province in northern Mongolia. The town is situated on the western side of a very broad shallow lake with dramatic high peaks on the far eastern shore.

Tsagaannuur is located at the edge of the great north woods, or taiga. As a result, the town serves two sets of people: Tsaatan and Mongol. The Tsaatan are a reindeer people (tsaa-reindeer) who live and travel with their reindeer in the taiga. Mongols are semi-nomadic pastoralists, making a living from herding horses, yaks, cows, sheep, goats on the grassland.

During the period when Mongolia was a Communist state, the reindeer herds were managed by the state. When communism ended in the early 1990s, the choice was given to Tsaatans to go back to traditional living with a portion of the state reindeer herd.

Tsaatan people come from Tuva, a region more north and west currently a semi-autonomous republic in Russia. They follow where the reindeer lead on their hunt for the lichen they eat. The reindeer have a roundabout migration, and the Tsaatan family group follows wheverever the reindeer go.

Both Tsaatans and Mongols in this region have a historical shamanic belief system. The Tibetan Buddhism typical in most of Mongolia did not gain as strong of footing this far north. Some people refer to the shamanism practiced in most of Mongolia as "yellow shamanism" because of the Tibetan influence, while the shamanism in this northern region is "black shamanism."