Lady’s Guide to the Naadam Festival in Mongolia

If there’s a best time of year to visit Mongolia, it’s July. The annual Naadam Festival is the highlight of the Mongolian summer. A trifecta of traditional Mongolian wrestling, archery, and long-distance horse racing, the Naadam Festival showcases some of the country’s most impressive traditions.

Naadam Festival

My last day in Mongolia was the opening day of the Naadam Festival. My friends and I were picked up at our hotel by our convoy of black SUVs and driven to the stadium in Ulaanbaatar for the opening ceremony.

The road from the parking lot to the arena was lined with vendors selling everything from traditional Mongolian food and drink to children’s toys.

We had time to pick up some excellent huushuur (meat patties) from one of the stands before heading up a back stairway to our seats.

Naadam Festival Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony of the Naadam Festival was part military parade, part historical reenactment, and part contemporary music festival.

I was lucky enough to be sitting near the cousin of my Mongolian friend and host. She explained the significance of the events as they unfolded.

Beginning with traditional Mongolian throat singing, the opening ceremony of the Naadam Festival transitioned to an address by the president.

That was followed by several horse parades, complete with an impressive display of gymnastics, archery, and other agility stunts by the riders.

Brass bands and traditional dances were interwoven with color guard exercises. At one point a rock band came on stage to sing a truly awesome ’80s power ballad about Genghis Khan.

Parachuters flew in from above with their brilliant silk sails, and the show culminated in sparkling fireworks in front of the performers on the field.

Naadam Festival Horse Racing

The opening ceremony of the Naadam Festival was followed by the first round of the wrestling tournament. We didn’t stay for it, though, as we were whisked off in our convoy to watch the horse racing outside the city.

After several hours of traffic and confusion over where we were supposed to be, we drove into a huge field full of large white ger huts and beautiful brown horses. We were in the owners’ area of the horse racing circuit.

According to our Mongolian friends, tradition at the Naadam Festival is to go from ger to ger, eating and socializing. Mongolians are famed for their hospitality, and no one will ever turn a visitor away.

The first ger we visited was a far cry from the one we had slept in a few nights before in Terelj National Park. Enormous, the ger was fitted out with leather sofas, mountains of food, and a giant flat screen TV with satellite broadcasting.

The wooden poles in the center were intricately carved with fire-breathing dragons and other mythical creatures. Rumor had it this was the president’s ger, but I never found out for sure.

Part of the ger-hopping tradition of the Naadam Festival is to offer guests a large bowl of fermented mare’s milk upon arrival. The milk sits in a huge ceramic vase in the middle of each tent, perched atop an orange stool.

Bowls are brought to each guest, and polite manners dictate guests try everything offered to them even if they don’t finish it. Bottoms up.

The mare’s milk tasted sweet on the tip of my tongue, but a bit sour towards the back. We were told that it “aids digestion”, so we should be careful not to drink too much of it. Not a problem.

After noshing on huushuur, Russian potato salad, and other good food, we thanked our hosts and moved over to the next ger.

This one was the ger of an American-Mongolian couple. It was full of people from all over the world. We entered, took the seats offered to us, and sipped from our second big bowl of fermented mare’s milk.

Then came the vodka. There must have been 15 bottles of Grey Goose in the corner, and we were handed beautiful silver cups of it. Thinking it was communal, we first passed the cups around, each taking a small sip.

Then the old woman pouring the vodka started laughing, indicating through a translator that there was a cup for each of us. Wow.

Keeping in mind we had to try everything handed to us, we all tried to drink our bowls of vodka as slowly as possible.

In need of some fresh air to combat drunkenness, we took a stroll outside to see the horses at the Naadam Festival. Unfortunately, our American host ran over to tell us to get away from them.

Apparently it’s bad luck for women to be near the animals before they race. Wonderful.

Back inside we ate some more, drank some more, and met some more people. We never saw any horse racing, but we had a pretty unique Naadam Festival experience.

Ulaanbaatar

Eventually it was time to go back to Ulaanbaatar, and we waved good-bye to our hosts and their gers.

Dinner that night was at a Japanese restaurant near Sukhbaatar Square. In the middle of dinner a Naadam Festival fireworks display erupted over the city, lighting up the night sky with twinkling stars of fire.

The World Cup final was that evening—er, morning—at 2:30am. After dinner we headed over to the Grand Khaan Irish Pub to wait for the game.

Almost every bar in Ulaanbaatar had some kind of outdoor pavilion set up for the World Cup, and the Grand Khaan’s was one of the largest. A red tent covered rows of tables and benches, all of which faced a giant screen.

We watched the game, cheering for Holland since one member of our group hailed from the Netherlands.

We got nervous when the game went into overtime and agonized when Spain won. It was 5am by the time it ended, and the sky was already light.

Naadam Festival in Mongolia

We headed back to our hotel to get two hours of sleep before going to the airport to travel back to Beijing.

I was sad to not get to see the last two days of the Naadam Festival, but I hope to use it as an excuse to visit Mongolia another year. This country is one of the best summer travel destinations, not least because of the festival.

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