Ochkhuu helped Norvoo's father, Jaya, cut hay for eight hours, and by Sunday night they had moved enough hay to the barn to keep his animals alive through the winter, even a dzud.

A few hundred miles down the "Road of Bones" is Oimyakon, known as "The Pole of Cold". It was here that the lowest ever temperature in an inhabited place was recorded – minus 71.2C.

Machiavelli would have found Sisyphusin Ovid's Metamorphoses 4.