Naadam Festival

We spent the last two days attending events at the Naadam Festival, this is sort of like the Olympics for Mongolians. The event started with a wonderful opening ceremony consisting of music, traditional Mongolia dancing, colorful costumes and a parade of athletes. We attending the events known as the 'The Three Manly events'; wrestling, archery and horse racing (archery did have women competing and the horse racing had children as jockeys) for centuries these events have been used in military training. We also found ankle bone shooting which is a new event, hard to describe but very interesting to watch. The horse racing was several miles from the town and in the middle of nowhere (as is much of Mongolia). The site was fantastic miles of gers, horses, people and some vendor ger tents selling food and drink, kites everywhere the eye could see. The whole experience was as I thought it would be from start to finish.

Hey, Mel we are in Mongolia.

We are off to the countryside today to visit a nomad family and do some horseback riding, I here there is some good fly fishing in the area, but I did not bring a pole.

Happy Naadam to all.
Terri