Day 16 Mongolia
A beautiful morning over the lake. Great sunshine and a return to the eternal blue sky. The lake really is stunning. The water is so clear when you're next to it and so many shades of blue from a distance.
Our first stop today was at the Reindeer People's summer tourist camp. They are a tribe that raises reindeer and live very remotely. Apparently they get a lot of help from the government and some NGOs to maintain their way of living. However they are increasingly forced to come down to "civilisation" to whore their way of life out to tourists so they can get some cash to survive. We had to pay 5000 MNT each to visit. That's about $3 per person. I'm not sure I would let tourists come in and check out my way of life for $3 per person.
First time I've seen reindeer in real life. They were beautiful creatures in very good condition. Pretty gangly looking but graceful in their own way. The fur on the antlers was softer than expected.
I didn't like that they were pegged down in a little area for tourists to come in and harass them. But I still took photos and harassed them. #badperson
These people also prefer to live in a teepee instead of a ger. Easier to transport. The teepee was pretty stark compared to the gers we've seen. Although the car battery hooked up to a Nikon camera and Epson printer was kind of at odds with what was said of their lifestyle.
We spent the rest of the day at the local nadaam festival. Originally intended to keep Mongolian warriors in fighting condition while they weren't fighting wars the festival is a way for the Mongolians to maintain the traditional skills of wrestling, archery and various horse skills.
Hard to tell whether it was a tourist thing or not but I had a really enjoyable day.
The wrestling was the first thing we saw. Basic rules are that you lose the match if your knee or elbow touches the ground. So they grab each other by their little wrestling costumes (think budgie smugglers and a small long sleeved jacket) and tried to flip, trip or fling each other to the ground. Some of the matches were quick and some lasted ages.
Some of the wrestlers were in jeans instead of the full costume because they couldn't afford them. Sad really.
Our original chosen warrior we called Cowboy. He turned up in a cowboy hat with jeans and the jacket thing and walked down the pitch like he had a big swinging dick. The man was cocky. He showed really well in the first couple of matches but then was eliminated by a smaller guy in a surprise match.
Our new chosen hero (aqua man due to the colour of his costume) came second overall. He was beaten by a giant of a guy we called Goliath. Our next choice was "stickers" (he had some plasters of some kind on his back) and he came third. Stickers was smaller but he had really good technique (based on my extensive Mongolian wrestling experience).
The ceremony behind it was pretty cool. The wrestler would run down to an official on the pitch and do a little dance next to them. Then the official would take the wrestler's hat off and the wrestler would go do another dance in front of the flags then go back and start the match.
After the match the wrestlers would do a little hug or something and the winner would slap the loser's ass. Then the winner would do an eagle dance then go get a handful of cheese from the judge's table and hand the cheese out to people.
The archery seemed to be a bit of an amateur affair. Anyone seemed to be able to come in and fire some arrows ... male and female both. They had to hit some wooden blocks about 100 metres away. Some decent attempts and a couple of hits but nobody really great. Arrows were blunted but heaps of deadshits just walking or riding their motorbikes through the middle of the archery field. Surprised more people aren't killed.
There were a couple of 22km horse races as well. We only saw the finish of those as they start away from the nadaam location. So a couple of times the whole festival would come down and watch the horses run in. The jockeys were all children between 6 and 12 years old. Not that exciting since we only got to see the last couple of hundred metres.
Sadly I missed the presentation ceremony because I was part of the cook group and we were preparing dinner. Would have been interesting as the whole thing is sung. So the announcements are sung and the winner responds in song.
Finally there was the horse skills section of the day. First up was a stick or something they put on the ground. The horsemen had to ride at full gallop and lean as far as they could off the horse and pick up the baton while still at pace. Only 2 people managed to do it and neither was riding at full gallop. This was quite interesting but I expected more people to actually succeed at it.
Last thing was lassoing. Apparently only the people who picked up the stick in the last even were supposed to do the lasso thing. But there were so few who got it they wouldn't have had any competitors. So everyone lined up to have a go.
They would bring this big herd of horses through the valley and a couple of guys on foot would try to lasso one. They only had a couple of goes at this as the horses kept turning away and wouldn't go down. The horses weren't stupid ... they knew what was coming.
The whole thing wrapped up after that because it was going to take too long to get through everyone due to the horses being non-cooperative.
Now we're staying at another ger camp nearby for the night before we start our trek back to UB tomorrow and finish up the tour in a couple of days.
Edit:
Adam woke us up later to come and witness a Mongolian shamanist ceremony. I would have thought this was a tourist thing since we were staying there but there was actually a local family there who called the ceremony.
I'm not entirely sure what was going on (still waiting for an explanation from our guide) but there were I think 2 shamans and a helper. The shamans were dressed in blue outfits with lots of streamers and decoration.
The group spread around a giant bonfire. The subject of the ceremony was sitting at the top of the circle and they looked zonked out. She was an older lady and was dressed pretty well.
The shamans started chanting and bashing hide drums. They started chanting around the fire then the main shaman started to focus on the woman. The helper came around and gave each of us a piece of cheese to hold onto for the ceremony. They were very specific that we don't eat it.
Periodically we wave our hands around in a circle in front of us with the cheese and chant "hooray" or something like that in time with the shaman.
At some point the group was able to kneel next to the shaman and ask her any burning questions or advice about issues in their life. One poor fellow who worked at the ger camp had to take his shirt off and get whipped by the shaman. Eventually he ran off. No idea what was going on.
This continued for a while (it was cold so it felt like a long while). Eventually the whole group walked in a circle around the fire 3 times then threw our cheese in there.
That was basically the end of the first part of the ceremony. A smaller bonfire had been lit up for the next part of the ceremony but it was more of a family ceremony and we felt like we were intruding so we took off.
Overall it was an interesting ceremony but total bs. I think the words I used to describe it were "mystical mumbo jumbo performance art". That said it's no different to Christianity or Islam or any other tribal religion. As long as it doesn't harm anyone through neglect (I.e. Not visiting a doctor because the spirits will heal me) and it's not forced on anyone I don't really care what people believe in.
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