Naadam 2010!

Today was the first day of the biggest festival of the year in UB- Naadam. It features huge tournaments in 4 national sports- wrestling, archery, ankle-bone shooting and horse racing. Today I got to check out the first three.

I got picked up early this morning and was whisked away to the big stadium with a small group of other tourists. We got their early to get seats for the opening ceremony. The ceremony featured singers, dancers, horses, parades, military demonstrations, 5 men who parachuted in and a speech from the president.

The most impressive thing I saw were horse riding tricks. These guys would do continuous acrobatic moves on and of their horses while the horses remained galloping down the field. The parachuting was pretty cool but also got a little ridiculous when the last guy crashed into a few dancers. Ouch.

Archery was exciting because the men and women go at the same time but from different distances. This society is so egalitarian- men and women have the same traditional dress, women compete in archery and horse riding and they seemed to be valued just as much. Pretty cool. I think that there's just no room for frailty and subservience in subsistence living. Both sexes need to be able to chop wood and scoop poop. Another reason the archery was great was because you could go right up to the competitors. It's the biggest tourist event of the year and it looked like only their families and a few white people had come out to see them.

You could also get right up in the ankle bone shooting. This is a sport like poker is a sport. They flick a bone off a slidey thing shaped kind of like a scrabble letter holder and try to hit two sheep ankle bones that are placed next to each other 170cm away. Kind of lame BUT, the Mongolians get serious about it. Men line up on each side of the "field" and scream loudly to both support their team and throw off the other team's shooter. It's very loud and very crowded. Don't worry. I got video.

Wrestling is done in fantastic costumes and doesn't begin without a lot of religious warm ups. How can you take it seriously? SEE PHOTO ABOVE