This is the first installment of a two-part series examining the hardship that nomadic herders face in a fast-changing Mongolia.

SANT, Mongolia Davaadalai Gongor, 41, tried feeding his family exactly as his ancestors had for thousands of years, traveling these central grasslands of the Asian steppe herding sheep and goats for dairy and wool. It didnt work.

He did everything as he was taught to do. He grazed his animals on land that his family has relied on as far back as anyone can trace. He lived humbly in a ger the octagonal tent, sometimes called a yurt in English, in which Mongolian nomads traditionally live with a herd well within the governments recommended limit to avoid competing livestock devouring all the grass. He piously maintained a Buddhist shrine. The most vibrant item he owned was a handmade snuff bottle containing a fragrant, snortable tobacco.

His first mistake was being born at the wrong time. If hed been born a little earlier, he might have gotten an education working for one of the communist collectives that managed herds in the Soviet era, when the grasslands were lush. A little later, and he might have seen where things were headed out on this dusty plain, half an hour from the nearest village, Sant, and nearly three hours from any paved roads. He might have realized that the grass wasnt getting any greener before it was too late.

In 2009, Davaadalai had a herd of 200 animals and a 2-year-old son, his first and only child. But that winter brought death. A dzud a perilously brutal winter that freezes the ground, makes grazing impossible, and kills with lethal cold what few animals did find enough food wiped out all but 19 livestock. Dzuds used to be rare. Now, in a region that has seen more average temperature rise than the rest of the world, these extreme weather swings mean the tradition of relying on ones own herd and the open range for survival is itself in danger.

The cruel twist is that the cost of buying things is going up at precisely the same moment herders with fewer animals have less cash to spend. Nomads like Davaadalai take out loans, putting up livestock as collateral, to buy hay to feed hungry herds. But when those animals die unexpectedly in increasingly severe weather, its easy to miss payments, trapping herders in cycles of debt and destroying their credit. With time, he slowly rebuilt the herd to about 170 head. But the family is lucky to pull in $1,100 per year from animals.

When I was young, there used to not be many types of goods and products, and cash was very rare, Davaadalai said, pouring cup after cup of homemade airag, a drink made from fermented mares milk, and a clear soju-like vodka also derived from milk. These days inflation is so bad that even though there are many goods, I cant afford them.

He cant even afford the one luxury a hardscrabble nomadic life was supposed to afford: closeness to family. To make extra money, Davaadalai, like many nomads, travels nearly eight hours east to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolias singular smog-choked metropolis, to do manual labor for months at a time, earning a little extra cash to keep the family afloat. Only semiliterate, there isnt much else he said he is qualified to do.

His main focus currently was making sure that there was enough money to get his only son, Purev-Erdene Davaadalai, now 16, far away from here, to a good university to learn economics.

Im the only child, the teenager, still rakish and baby-faced, said from across the ger. I need to get a good job and make more money to help support my parents.

Mongolia, a nation where a population the size of Houston dwells on land more than double the size of Texas, is undergoing a mass internal migration.

Debt-strapped nomads unable to make it on the steppe anymore cart their belongings to the open ridges on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, set up their homes, and become part of densely populated yurt favelas called ger districts that overlook the city. Without connections to infrastructure or electrical lines, the more than 850,000 residents now living in these unplanned neighborhoods ringing the capital rely on pit latrines that flood homes with raw sewage and burning coal to stay warm and cook food.