Day 188: Naadam Festival Continues — Horse Races in the Countryside
We got picked up at 8:30 to make the drive west of the city toward another festival site — this time to watch horse racing. It’s usually a 40-minute drive, but it took 1.5 hours with all the traffic.
UB’s landscape is basically city — and then green mountains beginning immediately at the city limits. There’s no sprawl (yet).
So picture us on a country highway among green mountains with thousands of cars inching along in one direction using all four lanes — everyone heading out to the races. Lots of breakdowns of junkers on the sides of the road, plenty of jostling for a lead, lots and lots of babies on drivers’ laps.
All I could think was: This would be the worst place to be if any of us had a bathroom emergency!
We arrived and hustled across the fields of parked cars and tents of families who’d camped out overnight to be there, aiming to get to our seats in time for the first race to cross the finish line.
There was chaos at the gate but we got through to the little “tourism section” bleachers just in time to watch a distant cloud of dust emerge into the forms of approaching riders.
This is one of the most exciting races of the festival: Young kid riders racing on five-year-old horses for 24k/13 miles across the plain. No adult companions, and more important…no saddles! These boys and girls are the top riders in their local province and came to UB from all over to compete for a national title. Hundreds of them participate. The first five get national titles. The last place one gets a special reward and a blessing saying he/she’ll be first the next year.
We watched and cheered and clapped there among the Euro/Chinese/US tourists — many of whom were of the telephoto-lens photographer variety. I was jealous of the fabuous pics they were no doubt getting.
Willa said this was her favorite part of the festival so far, and it’s hard to disagree. I love cheering on a race, and this one was unique.
After we’d wooooo-wooooo’d for about 70 incoming horses, the crowd dispersed and we went in search of other entertainment.
Again, the site was immaculately clean despite the crowds.
Corporate sponsors like Rio Tinto (Australian mining company) and Toyota had VIP areas.
We wandered around to all the booths and gers showcasing traditional Mongolian culture — games, clothing, ink script-writing, leather-softening, lasso’ing, dung-shoveling, etc. Another sign that the government is trying hard to appeal to tourists. Most of the crowds for these attractions were Mongolian, though — our guide said they’re just as much for the city-dwellers to learn about their heritage as it is to educate tourists (another theme we’ve seen a lot — countries doing what they can to educate their own young people about their cultural roots — a necessary act of preservation in a changing world!).
The kids got face paint — Willa got a butterfly and James got a wristwatch (Ganzo’s idea since James told him he didn’t like face paint). They had a small audience of people watching and taking pictures of them.
We watched singers and dancers and horse performers too.
Before leaving we made a stop at the carnival/amusement park kiddie area so James and Willa could jump in a bouncy castle, roll in this absurd inflatable tube thing in a pool and ride little electric cars around a parking lot (James rammed his jeep into a dad and baby stroller!!).
All the extra playing and lingering meant we were super late for lunch, which was all the way back in town. Traffic was bad — picture the end of a major concert or football game — and we didn’t get to the restaurant until about 3 pm.
Note to self: Tour guides that let you do what you want and go off schedule are awesome, but they need to tell you the repercussions (as in: more rides? Great! But just know lunch won’t be for fooorrever from now). We had no idea we weren’t eating there or else we would’ve hustled. Will make that clearer in future.
Back in town, Ganzo sat with us at Asiana, a restaurant where each table is inside a mock ger (yurt).
There was a button on the table to call the server! Amazing! Ganzo said most places had this and was surprised we hadn’t seen that before. Maybe we’ll see more of this.
It was here that we enjoyed the second highlight of the day: John and Grace, a 6- and 3-year old Mongolian sibling duo. They came by to introduce themselves two minutes after we alked in the door and asked to play. Their dad is American — a geologist from Kansas and 20-year UB resident — and their mom is Mongolian.
John was absolutely hilarious. A total character, bound to grow up to be in sales one day. The restaurant was basically empty so the four kids played and chatted between our tables the entire time.
John’s opening get-to-know you question to Willa was: “Do you have any allergies?” When Willa said no, he shrieked excitedly: “Me too!!” Ha! Finding common ground.
His sister followed up with: “Do you like baby chicks?”
John also wanted to know: “Do you have cousins?”
John then told us with comical enthusiasm: “Want to hear the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to my little sister??” Sure! “Her met a kid at the park and her asked her to marry her!!”
Then without waiting for a response he turned to the side and showed us his profile and declared proudly/excitedly: “Did you know that I’m actually fat?!?!”
We could not stop giggling — he never stopped talking. And when he wasn’t talking, his little sister was yelling a staccato: “Hey! Hey! Hey!” over and over to get Willa and James’s attention.
Willa and James went over to their parents’ table and sat there for a while telling them all about our year of travel. As they walked over, I heard John go, “Hey, this kid’s got some craaaazy stories!” jabbing an exaggerated thumb at James. Dying.
John’s up there with the Wild Kratts-obsessed kid we met at dinner in Aswan, Egypt in terms of entertaining tiny humans encountered on this trip.
After lunch we had some time to kill back in the hotel room, so we had quiet time. Willa read her book (wrapping up the 28th and final edition in the Junie B. Jones series) and James and I built the little model ger that Ganzo had gifted him upon arrival. He then used some of the little chess pieces (also a gift from Ganzo) as play people. He’s way more into that kind of solo imaginative dollhouse/figures kind of play than Willa ever has been.
By 6 pm we were back with Ganzo and taking our seats in the national theater to enjoy a balcony-view performance of traditional Mongolian music and dancing. There was throat-singing, traditional instruments, contortionists, etc.
There were also dozing Sullivan children. James zonked basically the entire time and Willa for about a third. I don’t blame them. It was dark and cool and the music was mostly peaceful and lulling. There aren’t pics from the show because anyone who dared to pull out a cell phone would get a green laser beam pointed onto their device until they put it away!
Dinner afterward was at Seoul, a sprawling event space/restaurant with “ancient Greek”-themed decor. It was just the four of us and we had a lost-in-translation experience there: the server brought a round of green salads and bottled water, and gave us an utterly confounded blank stare when we asked to see menus (Ganzo had told us the menu was a massive book of thousands of options).
They stared at us and backed away in confusion to go fetch menus while we looking back at each other like, “Did we just say something wrong?”
Soon all the waitstaff was staring at us and talking. What did we do?? Lol.
We ordered and when we asked for wine (there was a big wine and cocktail menu), they seemed very perplexed. Staring at us like, “Waaaaait, whaaaaaat…?”
Again we started laughing in baffled confusion. Throughout our meal the entire staff was talking about us, pointing and staring from across the room.
We’ll never know what the problem was.
On our walk home we passed the Soviet-era amusement park near our hotel and saw go-karts. Naturally James and Willa begged to try them (no way, we said, after today’s earlier stroller-ramming incident). For the rest of the night James pleaded with us to let him go on the GOAT CARS. Hahahhaha!
Good night!
Misc.
James keeps calling the festival a “festiball.” We sooort of correct him but it’s so cute.
You can tell tourism is an emerging industry here, and that the Mongolian government is pushing hard for it to flourish. I’m even wondering if that beautiful and professional exhibit we saw about Mongolia in Denmark wasn’t some traveling expo created to spur tourism interest in the place — it was all very beautiful and majestic and alluring.
The tourists here seem to be a smattering of young outdoorsy/backpacker adventurers and heavy dose of retired adventurer/professor-looking types. 70-somethings who look like they’re more interested in history and photography than in visiting some fabulous/luxury destination, if you can picture it.
