A COUNTRYSIDE NAADAM (SPORTS FESTIVAL) IN MONGOLIA: Guest Post by Caroline Hatton at The Intrepid Tourist

Mongolian horseman. Picking up the wooden stick at top gallop

My friend Caroline Hatton, a frequent contributor to this blog, can’t believe it’s already been seven years since she went on a guided horse trek in Mongolia in June 2015. There, she attended a naadam and took the photos in this post.

The valley where Mongol nomads gathered for the day.

“Why Mongolia?” Trip leader Thomas Kelly, a photo-activist published in National Geographic and other renowned outlets, invited the 16 participants to share why they signed up for a rugged horse trek in the former heartland of Genghis Khan’s empire. Some wanted a vacation off the beaten track. One horse-crazy girl was celebrating her transformation into a teen. And a young widow sought solace. My answer, as a lifelong horse lover, was “To discover a great horse culture.” My husband’s answer was “Because I’m the husband.” 

Starting in Ulaanbaatar, the capital where all foreign visitors land, Thomas and his wife Carroll Dunham, a medical anthropologist and trip co-leader, took guests in a minivan across the open steppe, to a remote mountain valley some 300 miles (about 480 km) away. There, we stayed in round tents called gers (rhymes with airs), like the local Mongolian nomadic horsemen who took us horseback riding.

Daily cultural events culminated with a naadam or traditional Mongolian sports festival. Naadam is short for "eriin gurvan naadam" (эрийн гурван наадам in the Mongolian script), "the three games of men." The three competitions are horse racing, archery, and Mongolian wrestling, rooted in historical warrior-training exercises. The Naadam Festival in the capital every July, on a national holiday, attracts top competitors and crowds of spectators from abroad. But there are also countryside naadams between nomadic neighbors, such as the one I experienced.

Local spectators arrive

Best dressed: this grandma

Young ones fixing sound system problems

The snack shop

Horse race finish. Riders are typically between the ages of 5 and 13.

Being ridden is not in this stallion’s job description.

The program didn’t include archery. Instead, men competed in untamed-stallion bareback riding and in a contest in which riders tried to pick up a wooden stick from the ground while their horse galloped at top speed (see top photo).

He got the stick AND stayed on! In the background, another competitor waits for his turn.

During that contest, Thomas walked his photography students, including me, to the virtual line along which horses and riders galloped full tilt past the stick on the ground. The rider reached mind-blowingly far and low. His weight pulled the horse sideways, causing it to turn—inevitably—right? So it was safe to be down on one knee on the straight line, eyeball to camera viewfinder, giving up the ability to judge distance, and just click away—right? As I did, my heart pounded, not in fear of being trampled, but in hope of getting shots I liked. Of the dozens I took, the one with the horseman in red (see top photo) is most like a tourism ad, and the one with the horseman in pink is my favorite, despite the bit pulling on the horse’s lips.

Mongolian wrestling

Wrestling medalists

 

The horse culture I had come to discover was both still steeped in tradition and updated.

Men catching up

Nomad families lived in gers they moved with the seasons, as they tended their herds of horses and goats, sheep and yaks across a land without fences. In the summer, they set up camp in the lush wide valley, on the life-giving grass by the river. In the winter, they camped near mountain cliffs, for protection from wind and snow. In the spring, they tied a blue silk scarf, the color of the eternal blue sky worshiped by Genghis Khan, around the neck of the first foal of the year, to celebrate its auspicious birth. Kids rode like the wind from a young age.

Boys catching up

The same horsemen guided our group, wearing traditional Mongolian shirts or long coats— their hospitality worker’s uniform—over jeans and T-shirts. Next to their gers stood solar panels, satellite dishes, and motorcycles. And they checked Facebook on their cell phones or made up rap songs in Mongolian while riding across the endless steppe with us tourists in tow.

FOR MORE INFO

Read this author’s post about Mongolia’s Welcoming Gers

All text and photos, copyright Caroline Arnold.   www.theintrepidtourist.blogspot.com