Wrestling with Mongolia

I’ve long had an innate talent for stumbling onto cultural festivals, most successfully in Sri Lanka where I on a whim took a local boat out to a tiny remote island in the far north (with one of the grandest jetties I’ve seen, supposedly due to a vote-splitting congressman), just to arrive at the island’s grandiose Hindu temple as the main procession for the region’s main deity was getting underway, the islanders carrying around a large idol on poles inside the colourful square temple while the chief priest played on a conch.

So naturally when planning for Mongolia I noticed that the national Mongolian Festival, the Naadam, was right smack in the middle of when we were planning to go horse riding. So to avoid upsetting the poor guide who wouldn’t be able to participate, and to experience this great cultural event, we changed our plans to allow us to enjoy the Naadam. It lead to some close planning, the morning after we arrived back in Ulaanbaatar we were scheduled to fly one hour northwest to Mörön (instead of a 12–15 hour bus trip), from where we would take local transport to Khatgal, famous not only for its horse treks but also for its authentic Naadam celebration, as opposed to Ulaanbaatar where it’s set in a large sports stadium, with much less crowd engagement.

There was just one problem, due to poor weather conditions our flight to Mörön was continuously being delayed in one hour increments, and once that had subsided the airline uncovered mechanical issues with the aeroplane to such an extent that we arrived 13 hours late, probably around the same time or after a bus leaving from Ulaanbaatar at the time we went to the airport would have arrived.

We made it to Khatgal at two in the morning, and were actually greeted by the proprietor of our guesthouse (MS Guesthouse, highly recommended) who had kept a fire burning in our Ger, keeping it nice and toasty, earning her my ever lasting love and appreciation. Mostly I was looking at the sky, at one of the most striking nightskies I’ve ever seen, the brilliance of the stars outshining everything else that had happened that day. Due to the peculiar timezone of Mongolia (it occupies the same timezone as Japan) the sun sets very late, and by the time stars had typically come out while in the Gobi I was typically long since asleep from exhaustion.

The Naadam in Khatgal lasts a full two days, and having slept in on the first day following our late arrival we missed the opening and earliest wrestling bouts. Following a surprisingly large and filling breakfast we walked to the festival, turning down the rides we were offered by locals glad to be stretching our legs after eight days in a van and a day in an airport, just about until we realised how far it actually was and that no more locals were going our way.

This the first day was mostly about the early rounds of wrestling and the archery everyone was free to join (an offer several Westerners tragically accepted, making fools of themselves not only because they were unskilled in archery). Saving my interest for the better fights the following day, because there’s honestly a limit too how much sports I can watch in a given time period no matter the type, I spent most of the day exploring the festival square, as this is just as much a social gathering as it is about wrestling and horse riding, the two main disciplines at the Khatgal Naadam.

Everyone from the surrounding countryside and farther afield were present in their “Sunday finest”, catching up with rarely seen friends, eating at small restaurants set up for the occasion (the local speciality seemed to be deep fried bread with pieces of meat stuck in throughout), shopping from the half circle of vendors to the one side of the wrestling field (on the other side was the horse racing track). Children were running wild, playing and cheering, older boys were often either admiring the wrestlers or riding around on horses, and while the wrestling pitch was mostly crowded by the men, the women were keeping half an eye on their children, adjusting their traditional dress, and it wasn’t unheard of that they’d give their children enough tugrik (the Mongolian currency) for an ice-cream, which I’m guessing is a rare treat in these parts even for Mongolia.

Most of the day, Silja had a girl that we named Sophia following her around (we never found out what her real name was), who made small figures out of grass and flowers for Silja and kept her company. She never took to me though, and would hide whenever I walked too close (so she stayed on the far side of Silja) or pulled out my camera. Towards the afternoon, once the wrestling had mostly died down, and all the more skilled wrestlers had advanced to the fighting tomorrow, the horse-races were held. Most of the race isn’t actually visible to the spectators, as the riders ride about 15 km away, turn around, and came back galloping at a furious pace.

The horses are full-sized, but the jockeys are quite young, about four-eight years old (riding in separate categories according to age) and riding in hard Mongolian saddles or even bareback, at full galop. When the riders approach the finish line on the return leg of the race track, they’re surprisingly still quite bunched up, typically with a smaller field surging ahead towards the finishing line eking out every little bit of effort from the horse, leading to spectacular and nail-bitingly close finishes even after a 30 km race.

After the Naadam is over, Silja and I will be going on a horse trek, and considering that I ended in a Chinese hospital with broken ribs last time, seeing children galop bareback without a helmet, didn’t exactly inspire confidence for my own safety (as I subsequently learned, the difficulty/danger of riding bareback isn’t a question of comfort, but rather the lack of stirrups which makes balancing much more difficult). Seeing these children at full gallop left me astounded, the photos here are from the last race with the oldest children, but the earliest races ranged down to six years old. Awe-inspiring madness, but probably perfectly safe round these parts.

After the competitive sports were finished for the day, live performers came out playing modern interpretations of traditional music and performing modern dances to said music. It was fairly interesting, but there was such a huge crowd and no raised platform for either the musicians and performers of the audience, that after tiptoeing at the edge of the crowd getting a peek every new and then, I went to one of the several tent restaurants on the outside of the half circle of merchants that encloses the grounds against the racetrack, and had what I assume is their main dish, seeing as how I sat down and pointed to my stomach, to which they nodded and eventually brought out a dish with rice, vague-looking vegetables, and meat.

We took a walk around Khatgal, a long town of low-slung houses on dirt roads clinging to the main (mostly) asphalted road that runs through the area, continuing north until the Russian border, walking as far as to the end of town where locals from the upland have their temporary Naadam encampments, and where aged and halfway decrepit ships lie ready for daily tours with tourists on the grand beautiful Lake Khövsgöl. Back at the guesthouse dinner was delicious and hearty, and the campfire outside roared until late in the night; as inefficient as wood is for burning, as charming is its crackling and warmth and as bountiful are the trees in this part of the world, a hardly developed corner of a hardly developed country, enveloped in lakes, trees, and mountains.

On the second and last day, we squandered the early hours by sleeping until even later than yesterday, but a delicious breakfast later, why this continues to surprise is that I’ve only ever had more than toast and jam at luxury hotels, we were on our way back to the Naadam grounds a short way outside Khatgal. We had luckily missed nothing particular of the tournament, and were in time to see several of the final matches including the final, and even had a better view as the grey weather threatened rain and drove away some of the locals and tourists alike. Luckily, rain didn’t break out until the final wrestling match was over (though I would have liked to see wrestling in the mud), making this the best day for viewing the wrestling, which even happened to be from the best viewpoint we had had so far.

Of all the aspects of Mongolian wrestling, few are as immediately peculiar as the outfit, particularly the zodog, the long sleeves tied at the back with an exposed chest. Legend has it that it used to be a closed garment, but that after a woman infiltrated the games and humiliated all the men of Mongolia by winning and revealing her gender, this new model became obligatory to avoid such an embarrassment reoccurring. Rounding out the outfit is the shuudag, the red or blue briefs, and the guts, the traditional leather boots. The rules are pretty simple, if anything but feet touches the ground the game is lost, certain grabs are illegal, such as striking, strangling and locking, and finally there are no weight or age classes; there are regional variations with more particular rules, but otherwise these are basically the rules.

The final match seemed to go on forever, maybe it’s a bit like World Cup finals with both teams too afraid to play offensively, but eventually and very suddenly a victor was found and the entire crowd of spectators streamed onto the field, all hoping to touch the winner and get some of his sweat which is believed to bring good fortune. As the rains started the wrestlers and officials hastily arranged for a group photo, plaques were handed out, and people started leaving hastily before the rain picked up. The rest of day was spent in the warm and dry common room of the guesthouse, learning Russian card games with travellers fresh off the Trans-Mongolian Railway, and practicing my amateurish French with some of the many French speaking guests (easily the biggest group of visitors to Mongolia).

That night a massive storm blew in keeping everyone awake with the wild drumming of rain and fierce gusts of wind; the next morning people reported of guy lines from tents being pulled up from the ground and tents almost blowing away. This weather continued well into the day, so we postponed the departure for our horse trek by a day and spent our newfound time shopping for the trip, and chewing through whatever books we were reading at the time. After the rush of the Gobi, flying up here and attending the Naadam all day for two days, a bit of breathing room before 12 days on horseback was much appreciated.

In the evening a couple of people suggested having a barbecue, so copious amount of meat were purchased and after one guy fashioned a sort of marinade, we spent the evening barbecuing meat and cooking the assorted vegetables we could find in town (Mongolia is definitely not for vegetarians, there’s about six or seven different vegetables available). Throughout the day Silja and I had been stoking the fire in our ger after waking up in a very cold and damp ger this morning, and when the day eventually came to a close, it was so hot inside that I couldn’t touch any metal, the plastic bottles inside had all been deformed, and I had no choice but to lie in my underwear, on top of my sleeping bag which had the coolest material I could find, and wait for the fire roaring in the stove to die down.

Somewhat curiously, I managed to speak Danish/Swedish with a local participant in the wrestling, a Swedish-Mongolian guy (not pictured) who had come back to Mongolia for the summer and lived in the upland beyond Khatgal. He lost in the second round to a much larger wrestle, and subsequently explained many of the rules of the sport which I had otherwise found puzzling, such as some of the rituals of the fights. It was when I went to eat lunch and I was struggling to order anything that he chimed in in English, and I could immediately tell from his accent that he wasn’t local, but surely a Swedish English accent was odd? Not so, he had lived in Stockholm since his family emigrated when he was three or four, but still managed to be both way more sexist than anyone I’ve met from Sweden and far (far) less humble and dignified than anyone else I met in Mongolia, a sort of worst of both worlds.