Day 398 - Nadaam Festival

This morning we drove all the way back to Kharakorim (in much less time without getting lost or breaking down), where we enjoyed the day celebrating the Nadaam Festival. Nadaam is a yearly celebration where sportsman partake in the 3 National sports - wrestling, horse racing, and archery. We arrived just as the skies opened up, and made a break for shelter under what turned out to be the judges tent. While most us of eventually headed for the safety of the Yak smasher, Adam stayed behind and ended up being offered his first taste of airag (fermented mares milk - the Mongolian staple light alcoholic drink).
While the meat-eaters feasted on Horshrog (a Mongolian snack kind of like samosas) Chana took Liv in search of vege food - which resulted in a delicious feast of potato salad, coleslaw, rice and potato fries (kinda).
We spent many hours at the main wrestling stadium, where half naked men slapped and wiggled their bums, attempted to through their opponents to the ground, and then flapped around like eagles if victorious. Thundering hooves would alert us that the horse racers coming in from their one and a half hour race were nearing the finish line and so the whole crowd would race off to cheer them in.

Lunchtime became a feast of firsts - we (minus Liv) got to try the traditional Mongolian dish called Boodog which is goat or in our case lamb cooked from the inside out with hot rocks, which you handle to warm the body (no doubt enjoyable during the freezing winter) - and also probably very "good for your healthy". We also tried Mongolian salty milk tea "Suutei Tsai", more airag, and even more horsrog. On very full bellies and under the watchful eyes hawks gliding in the clear blue sky (yes, blue sky - we're not in China anymore!) we wandered over to observe some archery, where the safety standards were non-existent - you could stand right where the arrows were aimed if you wanted to. Archery is similar to ten-pin bowling, where the aim is to knock over as many cardboard tubes as possible.

Later at the local markets Adam engaged in some serious trading, where we bought a new hat, and then 10 minutes later went back and managed to sell his unneeded old hat to the seller.
Chana had earlier organised for us to eat in a family Ger for dinner - we had heard about barbecue Mongolian style, so Chana found a family and taught them the art of kebab making, just so we could have what we wanted to dinner - what a woman!! We felt a little guilty watching them hold the kebabs over an open fire in order to please us.
We wrestled with some local kids in the dark, before heading off to our guesthouse Ger, where in honour of our 7 year anniversary 5 people crammed into one Ger just to give us our own!

Adlibing a festive 7 year anniversary.