Naadam

When I booked my trip to Mongolia I hadn’t realised I booked it around the most important holiday of Mongolia. The Naadam festival. I knew it was going to be a busy time but nothing prepared me for when we got back to UB from our trip. The hostel was so full they were selling room to sleep on the floor in the common room, it was a right job to get some sleep or grab a shower so for the 1st time this trip I lost it and had to go and cool down somewhere. Where is the best place to chill out in UB? The Buddhist temple of course and watch the monks perform their morning service of chanting the Tibetan scripts. Not being the most religious or spiritual person in the world I didn’t think I would be as touched as I was.

Now, I’m not saying I’m going to dump Ellie, quit Red Bee and shave my thick wire wool hair off to become a monk but if I had to choose a religion to follow it would be Buddhism. I kinda like the idea of it. This got me thinking about the pros and cons about religion. If I became a Mormon I could have multi wives, WOW religion is really good after all, but then I would have to give all my money away to the church. BOO!
I don’t think I could be a good Muslim as I can’t grow a beard pass two weeks before shaving it off. But then I would have a great name like Mohammad Smith. I could even start my own religion (cult). I could get all my friends from Face Book to join. Praise the lord Smith! Its amazing the crap you think about on a 24 hour train journey to China Isn’t it?

So where was I? oh yes, So after I had found myself at the temple I did some site seeing around the city. There isn’t much to see in UB, just a Soviet style square with Mongolia’s grand parliament building in the centre of it. There is rather an impressive statue of Chinggis Khaan that looms over everything in the square. A Leni statue once stood there but once the iron curtain fell so did the statue.

The next day was Naadam, having no clue what was going on we opted for a tour with the hostel. After breakfast the coaches drove us down the stadium park, it was no Olympic park I can tell you. We headed to the stadium to watch the opening ceremony. I don’t know why but in my head I thought the ceremony would be as grand as the Olympics, how wrong I was! It was more like the Colchester Carnival with people dressed up in all manner of traditional costumes even Miss Mongolia and Miss tourist board 2007 were there waving there hearts out to the crowd. It must be every young Mongolians dream to be crowned Miss Tourist Board. The final part of the the ceremony we were delighted to a one off performance from Mongolia’s number one pop act. I’m not sure of the artists name but it was more ‘X factor/Rock Rap’ with the singer dressed in a top hat and leather trousers. I was having flash backs to the Russian concert I attended in Ulan Ude.

So on with the games, there are four ‘manly’ games (no I didn’t make that up, it what it says on the ticket) These are wrestling which is the main sport of Mongolia. Horse riding where 5 to 11 year olds compete in a 32km cross country race. Archery which women can compete in now ‘ain’t so manly games now’ and a great game called Ankle bone flicking which looked so cool but I had not got a clue what was going on. I would look the rules up on wikipedia but now I’m in China now and they have blocked so many websites its unreal. This is why i can’t upload anymore photos to Flickr.
After a good few hours watching the games it was time to head over to watch the horse racing which is held about 40km outside UB.
Bad idea! Everyone in UB had the same idea to attend the horse racing so the road was jammed solid! 1 hour later and still stuck in the jam the driver had the brilliant idea of mounting the central reservation and hoping on to the other side of the road which was clear…….. except for the bikes, cars, trucks and horse and carts coming the other way! but that didn’t stop our fearless driver from playing chicken with the on coming traffic, still this crazy move got us just in time for the horse race. When we finally got to the track which was basically a huge piece of land that stretch as far as the eye could see. I was thinking it was going to be like Ascot or something, I’m not sure why i had that in my head but this was no ladies day at the races that for sure. It looked liked the whole of UB had turned out for this race. It really looked like everyone preparing for a battle gazing out in to the distance looking for the army of horses that was charging our way. Suddenly in the very, very distance you could make out a dust cloud which was getting bigger and bigger. About another 15 minutes later the horses with there young riders passed us in a cloud of dust, with a massive cheer and applauds from the vodka swigging crowd it was enough to get you fully involved in the race. What a sight, there must have been at least 100 riders in the race with the last few horse barley been able to run the last few 100 meters due to exhaustion (time for the glue factor me thinks). Well, I guess they had been running for 30 plus km so I’ll give them a break. The last part of the day was spent eating our dinner outside our bus in a dust storm, my sandwich was well, sandy…. sorry that was a bit of a poor dad joke. I have a great photo to show but you will have to wait until I’m out of china.

Next blog is the last part of Mongolia, what happens when Sam meets Stumpy the horse!