Damdiny Sukhbaatar the 'hero of the revolution' declared final independence from the Chinese in July 1921. Memorial flowers are laid at the foot of Sukhbaatar's statue as the Nadaam Festival begins. Hundreds of soldiers play warlike music outside the State Parliament House at Sukhbaatar Square to start off the Nadaam Festival. Locals in traditional dress attend the ceremony. A procession leads from the Square to the Stadium. They carry Chinggis Khaan's (same as Genghis Khan) 9 yak tails, representing the 9 tribes of the Mongols.


The opening ceremony takes place at Nadaam Stadium. "Nadaam" means festival and takes place every July 11-13 on the anniversary of the Mongolian Revolution of 1921. The ceremony was insane. A zillion dancers and performers going all at once in every costume imaginable. Some of the youngest performers waved 'hello' to us in the stands. Chinggis Khan riders gallop through. Everyone seemed excited to be apart of the festival. Costumes included Chinggis Khaan, a pirate, princesses, warriors and even a few Jedi knights were seen dodging about.

Then the wrestling begins! Before each elimination bout, wrestlers honor the judges and their individual attendants (zasuul) with a short dance called a devekh or 'eagle dance'. All the wrestling happens at once. It is a bit chaotic. There are no weight divisions and no time limits. The round ends when the first wrestler falls or when anything other than the soles of the feet or open palms touch the ground. After the bout ends, the loser must perform the 'takhimaa ogokh' by walking under the right arm of the winner. The winner then slaps the loser on his booty. The winner will then do the eagle dance again. The heavy boots are called gutul, pants are called shuudag and the small vest is a zodog. It is open-fronted as a woman once participated and floored the guys. This vest insures no women will take part.

Also not to be missed are the archery events, including the anklebone archery inside the tents. The Horse Racing is held outside of the capital. A mini Village pops out of nowhere and 1000 or so horses roam about. Both boys and girls race from the age of 5-13 years old. Some horses have to be walked in... while other horses don't even make it to the finish line ( Caution to animals lovers, it can get graphic ). Spectators rush to comb the sweat off a winning horse with a scraper made of a pelican's beak. Many spread the sweat onto their foreheads.

An amazing festival full of tradition, culture and country pride. Not to be missed!

Naadam is a combination Olympics/national holiday in Mongolia from July 11-13th. Mainly an excuse to party down, the games demonstrate the three 'manly' sports of wrestling, horce racing and archery. I had missed the horse racing yesterday afternoon, but the archery and wrestling competitions were continuing in the Naadam stadium on the south side of town. This was my first time to see the city by daylight; it surprised me being a lot more modern than I expected. It was an interesting mix, new Korean and Japanese cars jostled on the roads with older Russian vehicles. The Mongolians have strongly embraced capitalism and the West since the downfall of communism in the early 1990s but thankfully there wasn't yet a McDonalds or Starbucks to be seen.

The stadium itself was surrounded with dozens vendors and their gers (yurts), the traditional Mongolian nomadic house. Once inside the stadium, which is plastered with ads for Coca-Cola and local businesses (all in Cyrillic, the Mongolians use Cyrillic with a few additional letters), we sat down to watch the wrestling. Unfortunately we really needed binoculars; even with the best 'tourist' seats, the wrestlers looked tiny out in the middle of the field. The wrestlers would face off against each other; both of them dancing about wearing gaudy blue or red speedos with a frontless shirt/vest. The reason for this is to prevent women from entering the wrestling, at one time a woman entered in disguise and won the event! We next headed over to the archery competition. There were a half dozen Mongolians wearing their traditional silk costume (del) and conical hats standing in a line shooting towards the line of judges with the targets literally at their feet. Quite a spectacle, the judges would point to a target, and the archer would send the arrow (blunt ended) screaming towards it! The archers were all ages and both men and women are allowed to enter this event.

It was quite warm by this time and looking around for shade we noticed a tent where there was the sound of chanting. This was the ankle bone shooting competition, a team event, which consisted of flicking a bone or plastic chip towards a sheep ankle bone target. Team members sat on one side, the opponent's team on the other side of the target, both chanting and singing. Several of the wooden tracks used to flick the chip were quite elaborate; some had level bubbles built into them!

The best festival ever