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1992 was a year of change. Thanks to my passion for birdwatching, I met Irek, a biology student seven years my senior. He remains a great friend to this day. And thanks to him, a year later, I set off on the Trans-Siberian Railway to distant Siberia, to Lake Baikal. I was 16. I remember staring out the window for hours, admiring the endless taiga, the villages, the great Siberian rivers. It was then that I fell in love with the vast expanses of Asia.
In 1999, while drinking a beer at a friend's flat, I reached for a shelf where a small brochure titled 'Mongolia' lay. I opened the book, and that was it. Black and white, high-contrast photographs of people, empty spaces, big sky, and horses. I knew immediately that I had to go there. And as soon as possible. That was what I always dreamed about. Mongolia. Rugged and beautiful... and wild.
In 2003, I landed in Ulan Bator for the first time, with my childhood friend, Damian. My first impression was depressing. Ulan Bator looked like a crumbling concrete collective farm. As happens in life, chance led us to what turned out to be the first guesthouse ever built in Mongolia: Gana's Guesthouse. That's how I met Gana, and so the story begins.
In 2005, Pawel, my best friend, joined me. And so we created a crazy trio, giving ourselves Mongolian names. I became Zhizhig Bawgai, or Little Bear; Pawel became Khalzan Chono, or Bald Wolf; and Damian became Sakhaltai Yamaa, or Bearded Goat. To this day, 2025, we meet people scattered throughout the north who remember us and our Mongolian names. And that's fantastic.
Between 2003 and 2007, my circle of Mongolian friends slowly grew. Zorigoo appeared, and above all, Gana, Zorigoo's brother, with whom I went on my first wild horseback riding adventures across the northern province of Mongolia. This place, Khövsgöl Province, has become my second home. In 2009, I met Baggy, curious, intelligent and fearless guy, a close friend of Zorigoo and Gana. He became my best friend. This friendship lasts till this day.
It's thanks to him that everything that happened between 2009 and 2015 would never have happened. Thanks to him, I met the Tsataan people, a tribe living with reindeer in the northern mountains. Thanks to him, we managed to enter a small illegal gold mine. Thanks to him, I was able to capture a Mongolian wedding on film. Thanks to him, we met countless families living traditionally in the vast expanses of the north. And thanks to him, after years on horseback, I can gallop for hours side by side with Mongolians, as if I were one of them.
Somewhere along the way, I slowly became a conscious photographer, beginning to understand the beauty of photography. Slowly, sitting on my horse and looking at it all, I realized that what I see wouldn't last forever. I saw changes happening before my eyes. Chinese motorcycles were replacing horses, asphalt covered the muddy steppe roads, satellite dishes were appearing next to yurts, electricity was reaching every village. The internet and smartphones were coming. Russian UAZs were turning into Landcruisers. The speed of change in Mongolia was incredible. I captured as much as I could on film.
In all, over the years, I had traveled approximately 4,000 km on horseback, slept in tents for several hundred nights, and warmed myself by hundreds of campfires. I experienced stories I'd only read about in books. I lived a fairy tale. In the evenings, by the fire and with vodka, I listened to Baggy's childhood stories, learned the Mongolian language, and at night, listening to the howling of the wolf, I looked at the millions of stars above my head, at the magnificent Milky Way and the Great Bear, which became my travel companion, like Baggy, Chono, and Yamaa.
These photographs are a record of those incredible moments, places, and people I met. They are a record of a world that will likely never return. A record of the disappearance of a certain people, the nomads of Central Asia, the Mongols. Everything I have lived through, seen, learned, and experienced has become a part of me. A better part.
Przemek Strzelecki 2026
