In the winter mountains of Bayan-Ölgii, you live among the Kazakh berkutchi and ride out as they loose their golden eagles across the snow—a bond between hunter and bird older than any nation here. You learn the falconry, the felt tents, the nomad’s day.

This is a millennia-old tradition met on horseback, in a private immersion deep in a remote and frozen Altai.

You share the daily life of an eagle-hunting family—the ger, the horses, the handling of birds that weigh on the arm like history itself—and ride out with them across the white valleys as they hunt. Far from the October festivals that draw the crowds, this is the tradition as it is actually lived, in the depths of the Altai winter.