Okay... so I lost my memory cards for a while, and I finally found one (I promise more updates when I find the other one). A few weeks ago, Maureen, Naomi and I headed out to Terelj to witness the Mongolian Eagle Festival. The festival was being held near UB for the first time, as it is a Western Mongolian tradition. Obviously, we seized the opportunity to spend $30 and spend the day watching people drag fox pelts behind a horse, having their eagles catch them, and then a few bouts of goat wrestling - the goats don't do the wrestling, two men, riding horseback, play a kind of tug-of-war with a goat. All of the competitions are designed to show how good of a hunter the man is, using his eagle.
Okay, so the picture doesn't show what's going on so well. Check out the video
Eagle festival competitor. Not sure how you win this, but I know how you lose. One eagle just kind of flew away and landed on the mountain... guess it's not such a good hunter.
Big Mongolian men, wearing traditional Mongolian dels, with giant eagles. They seemed to like carring them upside down for some reason.
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