Hustai

7/5
The morning of the 5th everybody was there for the conference, so I met up with them at the hotel to head out to Hustai National Horse Preserve. At the preserve I again stayed in a ger, but this time I had a roomate (Claudinne) since we were there with a group. We arrived in the afternoon, and ate lunch, then headed out away from the camp for a mini Nadaam festival that was being put on for us. The first thing that they did was had a horse race with some of the kids. It's just amazing to see how good these kids are on their horses. They had all of us bet on which kid was going to win, and then the winner got a horse. We thought that they meant like a horse figurine, but after the race they brought in a herd of horses from somewhere and lassoed a foal, that was the horse that Dr. Gray and Juergen won. They spent some time after that trying to catch various horses out of the herd, and ride them. That was incredible to witness. Some of the boys also were riding their horses as fast as they could and picking a whip off of the ground.
Then they had some archery, which was more letting people from our group shoot the bow and arrow. And then they had some wrestling. The wrestling was pretty good, but they had their Soum (area) champion there so it was really no contest who was going to win. After all of that they had been preparing a "special" dinner for us of blowtorched goat. That was a bit much for me, so I did not partake in the goat that they were cutting up in front of my face. They also served "soup" from the goat which was really just melted fat. And had airag for us (fermented mares milk).




















7/6
The next morning we got up bright and early to go out and see the Takhi horses. They only come down out of the hills early in the morning or later in the evening when it is cooler to feed. After we got back from that we headed out to the river so that some people could fish. It was a nice lazy day just hanging out. In the afternoon they brought some horses for us to ride. However they put the Mongolian saddle on them which hurts your legs like none other. I'm guessing all Mongolians have nice calluses on the insides of their legs if they ride horses at all.
That night they had a huge bonfire for us, and had set up a DJ and everything. The following morning we just ate breakfast and then headed back to UB.