Uses Salary to Buy Motorcycle, TV : Herdsman Roams the Range for Socialism, 400 Horses in Tow

KARAKORUM, Mongolia —  Chultem Tumurbaatap is a socialist nomad, a herdsman who wanders for the state across the endless steppes of Mongolia.

Tumurbaatap, 26, rides herd on 400 horses assigned to him by the Karakorum State Farm, near the ruins of the ancient capital from which the sons of Genghis Khan once conquered an empire stretching from Eastern Europe to the Pacific.

Like his ancestors, he sets off every spring with his animals for half a year of seeking the green pastures of mountain hideaways, returning for a more settled life during the long and harsh Mongolian winters.

Salary, Paid Vacations

But in socialist Mongolia, the young horseman receives a salary for his labors and other benefits, such as paid vacations. The state farm to which he belongs, of medium size, has 1,000 members and 100,000 head of sheep, horses, cows and camels.

Tumurbaatap, hosting visitors in the round tent, or yurt, that is still common in both rural and urban Mongolia, shyly brushed off suggestions that socialism might not be suited for the wild and isolated life of a nomadic herdsman.

He said he is paid $150 a month and that his wife receives a similar amount for helping with the milking of the mares. He receives bonuses for keeping the herd healthy and holding down losses from wolves and winter winds.

With the money, he has bought a generator-operated, black-and-white television, a radio, a saddle with silver buckles, a new $1,600 yurt and a motorcycle. He said that in about 10 years he might have enough to buy a car.

Once a week, farm workers drive to his winter campsite about 9 miles outside the dirt-road town with portable hot-water showers. Movies, stores and performing troupes also make the rounds of the grasslands, and the farm provides a vehicle to help transport his yurt when he is on the move.

His three infants, when they are ready for school, will receive free boarding at the farm’s school dormitory.

Tumurbaatap, who also trains horses for racing, said he wishes that the state would let him keep more private animals. Now he is allowed to own only 10 head and a few of the foals born every year.

Socialist amenities have not softened the herdsman. “I like the snows in winter,” he answered laconically when asked about life on the steppes when the temperatures dip to minus-22 degrees Farenheit.

Like other herdsmen, he wears a fur hat, high-pointed boots and the del , the traditional long silk robe tied at the waist with an orange sash and with sheepskin lining in the winter. His 24-year-old wife, Bavuu Sanjaasuren, wears a similar outfit but sports nail polish and a fashionable white-striped knit hat.

Horsemeat a Staple

“Horses don’t like Western clothes,” he said when asked why he prefers the native costume.

During the winter, the family eats mainly horsemeat, boiled on a dung-heated iron stove in the middle of the yurt. The family, including the children, keep warm by drinking airak , a mildly alcoholic drink made from fermented mare’s milk.

Tumurbaatap was stationed in the capital of Ulan Bator during a three-year stint in the army, but he said he is not attracted to city life. “I want to live in the countryside. I like horses.”