Photo of the Day 253

Horseman Near a Lake, Mongolia, 2003

Photograph by Gordon Wiltsie

Each fall dwindling grasslands and frigid Siberian air send a thousand people and some 60,000 animals on a treacherous journey out of Mongolia's mountain-ringed Darhad Valley to winter pastures near Lake Hovsgol, where this lone horseman rides. And each spring they pack up and go back.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Mongolian Crossing: Is Time Running Out on Timeless Migration?" October 2003, National Geographic magazine)