2023.03.04. – Eagle Festival

Such a fun day!

We spent the day at Chinggis Khan Palace Tourist Camp just outside UB for the Eagle Festival. Mongolia has a bigger Eagle Festival in the Autumn but we’d just missed that when moving here (just a week too late), so we took the opportunity now and joined Uka (and two Spanish man) for a day-trip to this event.

The weather was really nice (only got a bit cold when it was windy), above zero degrees and mostly sunny, so we could actually stroll around outside all day and enjoy the fresh mountain air, the beautiful location (snowy mountainsides all around), and the general joyous atmosphere of the festival.

We got there pretty early (and well before the crowds), around 10 am (had to get up at 8, so only had a bit over 6 hours of sleep), and strolled around, watching the vendors get ready and some people mingling, riding camels, and such, until the opening ceremony began around half past 11. Just as we were moving closer to the stage, looking for Uka in the crowd (she left us behind when a random guy walked up to us and asked where we were from, and when we said Hungary, he greeted us and introduced himself in Hungarian (bad pronunciation, extra points for enthusiasm), and (switching back to English) let us know that he was from the Czech Republic and liked Hungarian language a lot), someone stopped us yet again. It was the Hungarian ambassador, standing all alone, watching the performance, and she spotted us easily in our matching, vibrant green coats. We watched the performances together and chatted, snacking on the popcorn we’d just bought before the opening ceremony. I am not sure which was more unexpected – the Czech guy or bumping into the ambassador.

There were only a handful of people at the venue when we arrived.

Some Mongolian clothes for sale.

Eagle hunters mingling before the crowds started arriving.

These nice chairs were already waiting for the vendors (but yet unoccupied) in the snow.

Look at this chipper camel! I don't even like camels but this one was so friendly and handsome.

Posing with an eagle hunter and his eagle :)

Dancers with special wooden spoons (that you are supposed to throw milk with when someone goes on a journey, wishing them luck).

After a few dancing and singing performances, it was time for the eagle hunters and archers (all on horseback) to arrive, then there were a few more performances (even throat singing) and then a show where the eagle hunters left their eagles back with the others one-by-one, riding away with their horses and calling their eagles from a distance. Some eagles were really well-trained and flew right to their owners’ hands, while others decided to land halfway across the snowy field and wait for their owners to go to them, and one just circled around overhead a few times before landing in a random spot near its owner but not quite where it was supposed to. Still, it was kinda impressive, if a bit boring after about 10 repetitions of the same. (There were 19 eagle hunters, and they all did this one by one.)

Horseback archers riding after the eagle hunters

Eagle hunters riding down the slope

Eagle hunter with his bird - such an iconic Mongolian picture

People were also bob sledging on the slopes, and strolling around the vendor stalls, and looking at the two camels, and taking pictures, and trying archery, and stuff, so it was all a buzzing festival, really. The eagle show was still going on but we started getting cold and a bit hungry, and somewhat bored, so we went to the restaurant of the tourist camp for lunch. They had a vegetarian menu, which had a veggie cream soup, two kinds of salads, and vegetarian khuushuur (it had eggs in it alongside the veggies, but we decided to just eat them anyway, for once). We left the milk tea, of course.

The toilet (+shower) building was a freaking castle. Never peed in a castle before.

The restaurant had such a nice decor and great atmosphere.

After lunch (warmed up and stomach nicely full), we strolled back towards the centre of the festival, where they were doing some cool horseback archery show. It wasn’t only adults but also some (older) kids riding their horses and shooting arrows while riding. Now this part was definitely impressive and entertaining. There was a guy riding with a target in his hands, so that they could also shoot at a moving target, and once he fell with his horse, but they managed to get up very fast, he didn’t even need to get off the horse. (Later, there were a few others who also fell with their horses, as the snow was getting slushy and slippery with all the sunshine, 8-ish degrees, and horses trotting all over it. But they all managed to get up, seemingly uninjured.)

Archers riding in line in front of the (static) target

When the horseback archers took a break, we ambled back towards the stalls, and I finally decided to wait in line a bit and try archery. Of course, I have tried archery before, I joined the archery club in Ireland while I was on my Erasmus there, but that was very different from this – different bows, different arrows, different target, different everything. I shot a few arrows (some of them missing horribly, some of them actually hitting close to the middle of the target), then we took a walk up the mountainside to a statue we’d spotted before. It turned out to be a Chinggis Khan statue – another one. We took a few pictures, enjoying the peace (it was a lot quieter here, somewhat away from the crowds), and watching some Mongolians play tug of war nearby. We’ve also noted (with the help of hubby’s phone) that we were 1500 meters above sea level. UB is already about 1300 meters above sea level, so that’s not much higher, but it’s still probably the highest altitude we’ve ever been at.

A game of tug of war in very typical Mongolian setting

Chinggis Khan

Going back to the crowds and the centre of all happenings, we arrived just in time to see the horseback archers play another game – they were riding alongside the crowd, flinging down from their saddles to the side and grabbing an object from the ground that looked like a leather pouch. Then they threw it back down and the next person had the chance to try and grab it while riding by. Again, it looked terribly impressive if a bit dangerous. (There were a few more falls, of course.)

I think this is a Kazakh game (and the eagle hunters were also Kazakh, at least some of them, and some other elements too) as the festival was a Kazakh eagle festival, I guess. But some dances and the singing was Mongolian. (There’s a territory in West-Mongolia inhabited by Kazakhs.)

Once the archers were done with their leather bag grabbing game, the eagle hunters returned and it was time for their main attraction, eagle hunting. One by one again, they rode down the slope without their eagles, this time dragging some kind of an animal carcass behind them on a string (some had a rabbit, some used other animals), and calling their eagles, they started riding away, pulling the carcass, and the bird had to catch it on the ground. Most birds actually succeeded in ‘hunting down’ their targets, landing on their back with their claws digging into the carcass. It was a nice show but after about half a dozen of these, its novelty started to wear off again, so we paid more attention to the cute white doggo standing close by than to the eagles. We decided to take another stroll around the vendor stalls (still not buying anything though, apart from a can of Fanta – everything was really overpriced bc of the tourists; rightfully so, in the morning, most of the crowd was actually foreigners (many tourists and some expats, I assume) – never seen this many foreigners in Mongolia before, and the locals only started arriving in the afternoon, mostly families with kids).

Dancers taking pictures in front of the ornate gates (on the festival stage)

As we were really tired by this point (having walked about 10k steps, stood around for about 6-7 hours, all the while out in the fresh mountain air, with the sun shining in our faces - I even got a slight sunburn - and the wind beating against our skins), so we asked Uka to take us back home. We had sandwiches (that we had taken with us but ended up not needing, thanks to the vegetarian men) and fries (ordered from Burger King) for dinner, then spent the night chilling on the couches, drinking tea. (I may have a slight cold that came on last night, when I started sneezing and blowing my nose a lot, all of a sudden. During the day it was pretty okay, but now that it’s evening again, I am back to a super runny nose and sneezes. But I can’t get sick, so I’ll need to drink an AspirinC before going to bed.)

All in all, this has been one of the best days we’ve had in Mongolia so far. Nice weather, outdoors, some Mongolian culture, and a great atmosphere at the festival.

PS the ambassador just sent a friend request on FB - and that made me feel like bragging a bit, cause how cool is that? Must be thanks to the popcorn we shared with her. ;)