Travel

Roads Less Traveled: Photographing the Brutal Mongolian Winter

Photographer Dheera Venkatraman likes to travel to places others might not have on their bucket lists. In fact, he often reads tourist guidebooks and crosses all of the recommendations off of his own list, and does whatever is left.

"Tourists flock to Mongolia in summer, but seldom in the brutal winters, so it sparked my curiosity," Venkatraman told weather.com. "People do live there year-round after all, so I wanted to see what it was like."

Venkatraman traveled to Mongolia by train from Hong Kong via Beijing, and was able to watch the weather change slowly from pleasant to freezing over the course of a few days. As Mongolia can reach temperatures of -13 to -49 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, the cold can be dangerous for unprepared visitors. But Venkatraman, an avid winter hiker, was ready for the weather.

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"It's definitely not easy to manipulate a camera in extreme cold with thick gloves on," the photographer said. He used liners under his gloves, which allowed him to take off the gloves for a minute or two at a time without a large risk of hypothermia.

Venkatraman listed some of the tools that help Mongolians survive the brutal winter, which included lots of wool, fur, boots, hot Mongolian milk tea and heated, insulated tents. Modern conveniences are far and few in the countryside, where the photographer took some of his most stunning shots.

"Locals are definitely a lot tougher than me, since I grew up mostly in the tropics," Venkatraman shared. "It's definitely not an easy place to live in winter, and by traveling there, I definitely gained a lot of respect for both nature and the local people."

For more information, visit Venkatraman's website.

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