The Hulunbuir steppe

A hundred thousand square kilometres of unfenced grass on the Russian and Mongolian borders, watered by more than three thousand rivers. Herders still move with the seasons, and the local naadam, the Mongol summer festival, pits wrestlers, archers and riders against each other over twenty- to thirty-kilometre bareback races run by children. Winter drops below minus forty. The grassland is threatened by desertification and overgrazing, against which livestock quotas have been imposed.