Naadam

It's mid-July and the Naadam festival is upon us here in Mongolia! Naadam literally means 'games' and refers to the three "manly sports" of horse-racing, archery, and wrestling. Despite the name, only wrestling is exclusively a men's sport. Women compete in the archery competitions and boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 13 jockey their families' prized horses over 10-20 mile courses in the races. The traditional festival greeting, saikhan naadaarai!, translates to "happy games!"

Originally me and Matt were planning to leave UB for the Naadam festival. Unfortunately, we realized a little too late that most of the countryside Naadams happen before the UB Naadam. This way the competitors can compete in their hometowns and then go for more glory in UB. To make the most of the UB Naadam, we got up at the crack of dawn and went out to the race course, about 30km west of the city, to watch the stallion race. It was cool, foggy, and chilly. We got ourselves some hot salty milk tea right away to warm up, and some traditional khuushuur (fried meat pancakes). Having already experienced airag (fermented horse milk) we decided to give it a miss.

Soon after we lined up along the bleachers with a crowd of excited Mongolians. We were all crammed in against the ropes holding us back from the track, squinting into the fog for a sign of movement. After about 20 minutes the headlights of the lead car became visible and an excited murmur went through the crowd. Slowly the outline of the horses became visible through the fog. The horses came galloping in to a chorus of "coo! coo! coo!" from the crowd, the traditional encouragement to the horses and their riders to finish the race strongly. As the first five horses neared the finish line, a horse and rider galloped from the sidelines to meet each of them and cross the finish line with them.

Each race has hundreds of horses competing in it, so we stayed for a little while to watch the runners up finish the race. Afterwards we had some more milk tea and made our way back to the city.

The horsemen waiting to meet the first five horses.

The winner!

Runner-ups vying for a higher place.

Side note:

Hannah and her parents brought us back this beautiful tuski (Kazakh wall hanging) from Bayan-Olgii. It was handmade between 1962 and 1964, a true antique! We are totally delighted with it and we've hung it up in our apartment where it takes up an entire wall.

Up close.