Mongolian Kitsch

6 February 2008

Eagle Fest

Posted by JonHaley under: Countryside; Culture; General Mongolia .

What better way to add some excitement to the painful plodding pace of winter than to throw a good old fashion Kazak Eagle Festival? (Mongolian’s are all about animals and festivals. You name it, camel, yak, reindeer, eagle, antelope, etc., and it’s got its own festival at some point in the year).

Last weekend it was the eagles and their Kazak herders (falconers?), an ethnic minority from the far west of Mongolia (ie. near Kazakstan). Every foreigner in UB and many Mongolians were out for a fun-filled day in Terelj, the national park outside of the capital, featuring low-flying eagles swooping around and attacking anything small, fast, furry, and orange (we were explicitly warned on the ticket not to wear fox colored clothing!); a rousing game of “goat-polo” more or less rugby played with a goat while on a horse; and some actual live animal sacrifice in the form of a few rabbits offered as casual sport to the eagles, something that likely wouldn’t have gone down so smooth in North America.

Unfortunately, standing outside for 4 hours in the -xx°C led—some might say obviously—to some frozen feet, mild hypothermia, and a case of the flu which sort of made the experience less than sweet. But some valuable cold weather lessons were learned: don’t be cocky with the weather, protect the kidneys, I am not as tough as most Mongolians, I have shamefully little body fat. All better now though and a little smarter to boot!

Since I still don’t have a camera, I got all these shots from my roommate Jude. Everybody else with a camera was snapping away all day, so I might put some more pix up from them after a while.

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