Chapter 12 - The Mongolian Naadam Festival of 2006
A once-in-lifetime opening ceremony to the Naadam; horse-riding on the Steppe and avoiding getting hit by Mongolian archers.
The Intrepid Crew and the horse races
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Tuesday, 11 July 2006
Let me introduce the actors who will be playing a large part for the next 16 days of our story. These are the people who will join me around Mongolia for the guided tour.
Robin is our tour guide and leader from Intrepid. He is a relatively young fellow from England who had been teaching in China prior to joining up with the tour company. This trip, however, is his first in Mongolia. Of course, we will have a local guide, but she wasn’t there for the introductory meeting.
Next up is Lori, a New York native with a most definite “New York” accent. Her roommate is Sarah from England. Sarah has apparently quit her job for travelling — she has no idea for how long she will travel, maybe three years. Mieko is an older lady, and I think a dental anesthesiologist from Zurich, though her heritage is Japanese. She’s already convinced me that I should get a pedicure and manicure for the first time in my life while in Ulaanbaatar (we’ll see…).
Scott is from Denver, Colorado. I’m not entirely sure what he does for a living yet, but he does like climbing and has already summited Aconcagua–the tallest mountain in South America. Rounding off those travelling singly is Danielle from Australia, who arrived early on Tuesday morning, quite a bit after the rest of us had met up.
The couples are from Australia and New Zealand. Steve and Barbro are from Melbourne, Australia. Jenny and Zack are from Auckland, New Zealand. Everyone seems like a lot of fun.
Horses Galore
Tuesday morning, we boarded our buses and drove off to the Naadam Festival. During the Naadam Festival, Mongolia pretty much freezes shut and all eyes turn to the festival. Naadam is held throughout the country, but the one in Ulaanbaatar was the biggest and the most spectacular. It was a tradition that stretched back hundreds of years, somewhat similar to the world’s Olympics, but only featuring the traditional sports of Mongolia. These sports were wrestling, horse racing, archery and anklebone-throwing. This year was slated as a special celebration, the biggest Naadam yet, all in honour of the 800th anniversary of the founding of the Mongolian Empire under Chingis Khan.
I wasn’t sure what to expect at the opening ceremonies, but I suspected it would be interesting. I was not let down. The ceremony was a blaze of colour, dances, acrobatics and pageantry. At times, it reminded me of the 1988 Seoul Olympics opening ceremony, albeit on a much smaller, more intimate scale with about 10,000 people. I hope my pictures will carry more weight than anything I describe in words.
Our local tour guide will be a young lady by the name of Jargalan, pronounced with a lot of guttural spitting sounds, more like “Jarathalan.” I suspect I will learn little Mongolian while I am here. She speaks fantastic English and seems genuinely enthusiastic about making sure we have a very good time. This is her first tour-leading gig. Please note that means we have a fresh-faced Robin and an equally green Jargalan.
After lunch, we (minus Derek) drove off to see the horse racing, which was being held two hours outside town on the Mongolian Steppe. When we topped the hill overlooking the races, all I could see were vast grassy plains with gently sloped hills dotted with Gir (Yurt) camps. Horses were being corralled in pockets everywhere. The weather had turned against us. With a backdrop of rain and fog, I could see a train winding through the plains in the distance. I swear, if you could replace the Girs with teepees, I might as well have been in 18th- or 19th-century Montana.
The Mongolians are amazing horse riders. During the opening ceremony, their horse acrobatics were awe-inspiring. Up to this point in my life, I had never really ridden a horse–though I seem to remember being on top of a pony once. For me, personally, all this was even more astonishing. The horses, not the riders, are the stars here and are ridden in such races by very young children. This is not for the faint-hearted, with accidents befalling the children.
Unfortunately for us, we had just missed the race that we had come to see. However, instead of resigning to our sad situation, Lori, Mieko, and Robin headed back, leaving the rest of us out on the steppe with Jargalan. Our cut-off time to see the next race was about 6:30pm, as we had to get back to make our restaurant reservations. By 6:30pm, the race was still yet to start. The horses were being pooled together for the race and being checked by doctors out in the distance. By now, a hundred or more horses had been rounded up with their young jockeys atop. As a 5- or 6-year-old, I could barely survive or walk in a graceful line, and here, such-aged children were riding major horse-racing competitions.
Feeling rather saddened at the thought of missing this race, we headed back as instructed, only to find that the authorities had blocked traffic to the city and, as such, we had no choice but to see the race. We made it back to the stands just in time for the finish. The mist and rain departed just as the horses approached the finish line of this 30km race. The dust cloud raised by the horses’ hooves was visible for a full 20 minutes before their arrival.
Interestingly, we noticed that some of the horses finished riderless. Despite being riderless, the horse can still win the race–everything is about the horse and not the rider. Of course… it makes you wonder what happened to the rider.
A double rainbow opened in the heavens above the finish line just as the horses crossed. A good sign for a favourable Naadam, no doubt. I do have to wonder about the number of police and army committed to the safety of the Naadam, and whether this festival is not a good time to commit some bank robberies here! To prevent people from crossing into the path of the horses along the unmarked and “unroaded” plains, the police and army had created a human wall stretching so far that individuals became mere dots in the distance.
After the race, we returned to Ulaanbaatar for a supper at a Greek restaurant.
I am now quite tired. Heat, wind, exercise, rain, excitement, and fresh air all combine to promote sleep. Tomorrow, we will witness the other Naadam sports: archery, wrestling, and anklebone throwing.
Oh, and I almost forgot another highlight from today. Some Mongolians offered us horse rides. Having never ridden a horse, I immediately took them up on the offer for a short ride with a rider. The rider sat behind me and managed to get the horse to go fairly fast, and wow — amazing. I might need to learn how to do this for real.
I must gallop into dreams now.
The Alternative Olympics
*Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Wednesday, 12 July 2006
I guess none of us should have been too surprised that our leader Robin wasn’t around for our Naadam departure at 9 am. The groggy voice that answered my insistent knocking on his door could hardly be called human. Poor Robin had had a very bad night. He had fallen out with a friend, subsumed with alcohol, and an argument over the fairer sex. All this we learned much later. We left him be and instead hopped into a single van led by Jargalan–Scott had to lie down on the floor in order to fit. Today, we were to see traditional Mongolian wrestling, archery, and anklebone throwing.
The wrestling, which, as a style, resembled Sumo, was performed outside. I’m not sure what the rules were, but the combatants locked onto each other, regardless of weight and size, until one wrestled the other to the ground. Apparently, a wrestling match could last up to several days. While the two were locked at the shoulders, struggling with each other, the referees moved around them, slapping the contestants on the butt. Why? I have no idea; maybe it was to get blood flowing, maybe it was to speed things up. Maybe they just liked having their butts slapped.
Around the corner were the other major events: archery and anklebone throwing. As you can imagine from their military successes 800 years ago, Mongolians were some of the greatest archers in the world. In today’s events, men and women were accurately shooting distances of 200 m or more. The targets were small cans surrounded by judges. Yes, the arrows flew directly at people sometimes, and I’m sure that, despite the arrows being tipped with cork, it would hurt to be hit by one.
Anklebone throwing was perhaps the most unique of the sports. Inside a small warehouse, three men sat on the floor, squared against each other, flicking bones from a launch board made of wood. The targets were a pair of anklebones on a table. This itself wasn’t that unusual, but the process and surroundings certainly were. All the contestants and judges who sat around in a circle were continuously chanting in a very weird harmony that was to induce luck.
After these two events, and with heavy rains seemingly moving in, most of our van decided to return to the hotel, do errands, get laundry done, and so on before we would have to leave for the countryside the next morning. As it was, the weather cleared up and the other van had a spectacular time.
By the time we arrived, Robin had finally exited his room. Derek opted to stay in, while the rest of us headed out for food and groceries for our trip. Scott and I picked up a bottle of vodka each, and in a fit of insanity, picked up three $1 bottles of wine – labeled “Madness” – and a Mongolian liqueur.
Lori was incredibly happy about having discovered a replacement backpack. Apparently, she had bought her current backpack over the Internet, only to discover that it was a top-loading pack. She hated not having the ability to open it up like a suitcase. She has vowed to donate her second backpack to a deserving person during our trip.
Our plan for the evening is supper at an Indian restaurant, followed by sleep and an early morning rise to start our journey across Mongolia.