Mongolia 2018 Part 3

Day 5 (October 4)

We drove back the next day, arriving in Ulaanbaatar for lunch at a local restaurant.  After lunch, we went to the National Museum, where one of the curators gave us a tour.  The bottom floor contained artifacts from and exhibits about early steppe history up to around 1100 AD, including replicas of Mongolian “deer stones.”  Deer stones are ancient megaliths that were erected during the Bronze Age (about 2000 BC) to the Iron Age.  There is no definitive answer about why they were used; different theories run from territorial markers to commemorative plaques.   

The second floor contained exhibits of traditional Mongolian outfits from the twenty-one different regions that make up the country, and other background material (musical instruments, snuff bottles, etc.) leading up to (surprise, surprise) the next floor which started with exhibits about Chinggis Khaan and the Mongol empire.

That morphed into a small section covering the years from the end of the Mongol empire to the formation of the Mongol People’s Republic in the early 20th century, when Mongolia came under Russian rule, and from there to post-1990 Mongolia, the current democratic country it is today (entertaining because when you reached that final section, suddenly there was rousing music and all the walls were bright and cheery). 

Deer Stones	Tradition Mongolian clothing from one of the twenty different ethnic groups in the country
And more clothes from many ethnic groups	The war banner of Lord Chinqnunjav who lead an armed uprising against the Manchu occupation, 1758
Artifacts from early 1900s	Democratic Mongolia in happy shades of blue

Day 6 and 7 (October 5 and 6th)

We were up in time to leave the hotel at 4:00 am the next morning, making it to the airport to catch the chartered 5:50 am flight to Ölgii, the capital of Mongolia’s westernmost province of Bayan-Ölgii.  Olgii is the town that hosts the Golden Eagle Festival.  Nestled against the Altai Mountains, the region is 90% ethnically Kazakh and primarily Muslim (the only Muslim province in Mongolia). 

O-dark-30 flight to Ölgii

View during the flight

Ölgii  town square

The outdoor market

Fashion shot with the women

We had a short stop at a museum that focused on Olgii history, and next visited local mosque.  We then headed for ger campsite number two, which was about ten miles out of town next to a river on an ancient flood plain, looking out at the surrounding mountains.  It was a supremely beautiful spot. 

Approaching the camp site

The river that flowed by the campsite

Sleeping Ger

The Golden Eagle Festival was, in a word, fantastic.  It wasn’t just that the eagles themselves were wildly beautiful birds, large and fierce predators with piercing eyes and wickedly sharp talons.  It wasn’t the skill of the riders, whether handling the birds or demonstrating their prowess on horseback.  It wasn’t the pop-up market, where nomadic families had their handcrafted wares (be they barbequed skewered meat, cashmere, or wall hangings) out for display and sale. 
 
It was the authenticity of the event. 

There were 120 competitors, and somewhere near 1,000 or more spectators, but there was nothing separating the two other than a simple rope to indicate the playing field.  Many of the spectators were locals, and the rest were mostly older Caucasians like us.  That seemed odd, as China has a burgeoning tourist population that is swamping European cities, and China is a neighboring country.  Ganzo explained that there is a general mistrust of Mongolians by the Chinese population; while the governments are cordial, four thousand years of invasions of China by the inhabitants of the steppes has left its mark.  

But we were all there, rubbing elbows, the eagle hunters in their fine fox-fur coats and hats, camel riders decked out Kazakh style, families in blue jeans selling local crafts, tourists in whatever they were comfortable in.  There were some individuals that were dressed in ceremonial Kazakh garb for portions of the event, but even that had the feeling of people putting on their Sunday best for church rather than someone doing cosplay, or dressing in homespun to show what people who arrived on the Mayflower lived.  It didn’t seem like a show, it seemed like a celebration.

Which is pretty funny, because the Golden Eagle Festival is completely made up.

The eagle hunters sharing our campsite	Closeup of one of the hunters
Golden eagle in flight	They usually had blinders on to keep them calm

Let’s more formally introduce Jalsa Urubshurow, the charismatic CEO and owner of our tour company Nomadic Expeditions, into our little narrative.  Jalsa is the kind of guy whose personality fills any room he happens to occupy.  If you’re into anime, he’s Iroh, the brother of the fire nation emperor, enjoying life with gusto, taking nothing too seriously, relaxed in any environment, and yet giving wise counsel to his nephew.  But there’s that sense that beneath that jolly exterior, always with a story to tell or a wry observation to make, lies a markedly capable and strong-willed individual.  

Jalsa was in one of two groups of Mongolian refugees that came to the U.S. when he was a child.  He and his family settled in New Jersey. He told us stories about his father, who lacked any kind of formal education, but who instilled a deep-rooted reverence for Jalsa’s Mongolian heritage.  Jalsa went on to become the owner of a successful timber business, successful enough that he could afford to invest in a travel agency that specialized in custom journeys to Mongolia and other Asian destination.  Thus, Nomadic Expeditions was born.  

Which brings us back to the Golden Eagle Festival, which was started in 2000 by Jalsa and a few Kazakh partners.  Having said that, it was more taking an existing but very informal competition and making into something large enough and organized enough to become the spectacle it is today.  It was a way to promote Mongolia and culture, though not done for financial gain; Jalsa pours most of the money from Nomadic Expeditions back into the community.  Jalsa simply loves Mongolia; he told us one story about a serious drought year where the cattle were dying of starvation, and how he financed forty thousand pounds of hay and high protein food pellets for the local herders.

But back to the festival.  We were lucky enough to have a group of eagle hunters staying at our ger camp.  As it turns out, Zsolt, our group’s resident Hungarian and Native American flute player, is also quite a horseman.  He is a very warm and gregarious individual who bonded with everyone.  Multiple times he stayed up until the very wee hours of morning drinking and talking with people… and the morning of the competition rode off with the eagle hunters for the eight-mile horseback ride to the Festival.

 

Sunrise over the camp (with the moon hovering overhead)

Zsolt and company heading for the Golden Eagle Festival

The Golden Eagle Festival ran over two days and consisted of five main activities.  The first was to get your eagle, launched off the top of a mountain, to come land on your wrist.  The farther from the mountain you were, the more points you were awarded.  The second was grabbing small bags off the ground while galloping by on horseback, which requires the rider to ride hanging sideways, sometimes almost upside down on the horse, holding on with nothing but their legs and pure determination.  The third competition was similar to the first, but instead of landing on your wrist, the eagle had to snare a lure dragged behind the horse.  The forth was ritualized courtship game where a woman and a man in ceremonial wedding clothes on horseback rode around while the man tried to steal a kiss and the woman tries to beat him off with a riding crop. They had several pairs of riders of different ages perform this somewhat baffling maneuver though the women seemed invariably to win.  The final competition was a tug of war on horseback using a fifty pound goat instead of a rope.  In case you’re worried about the goat, don’t be; it is dead, it’s head and bones have been removed (don’t ask us how you remove the bones without cutting up the goat, it’s a Mongolian mystery that is better left unsolved), the blood drained and the skin sewn back up.  The winner gets to keep the goat carcass, whose meat has been violently but completely tenderized by the end.  It falls in the gruesome but fascinating end of the entertainment spectrum.

View of the Eagle Festival grounds from the top of the mountain where they were released

Camel were common	The star of the Eagle Huntress movie
Coming in low	Ready to kill
One of the "beat him off with a crop" riders	And Eagle Hunter arriving from a distance ger
Starting young	The kiss her, smack him game

After the Festival’s first day, we had a chance at camp to wander around the flood plain.  It offered up a fascinating variety of water-worn rocks and open vistas, along with dozens of multiple-thousand-year old burial sites called khirigsuur.  There were a few different varieties; simple heaps of stone, stone circles, and stone squares (and maybe others we didn’t see).  Then we came across a current cemetery that used the same general technique but had grave markers.

The flood plain	Grave markers (the pile of rocks)
Looked like a foundation	But it was a graveyard

To celebrate the end of a terrific festival, during our final evening at the ger camp there were local musicians, a bonfire, and cocktails (cosmopolitans and “monhattens” were the favorite drinks) by the river.  That eventually gave way to a dance party, which might have fallen a bit short of being called a rave but wasn’t far off.  Zsolt ended up playing the flute by the bonfire and everyone slept well that night (other than Zsolt, who impressively stayed up talking with other night owl denizens until the sun rose).

Continued on Mongolia 2018 Part 4