On our first day we went to the Nadaam opening ceremony and hung around to watch some events. We were treated to some tradional music and throat singing. It was a bit chaotic at times. At one stage we had a singer, folk music, a small model plane zooming around and an ongoing commentary from the MC over the PA. While the wrestling was interesting, after a while I found it more interesting to look at the crowd. With four adults there was always someone to look after Alesia and Keira, so I wandered around with my zoom lens pointed at the stands. The family below were seated next to us for a while. Grandma is busy sorting out the dummy, while Grandad sneaks a kiss. The parents, and the child, are dressed in western clothes - in contrast to the grand parents kitted up in their dells. Later on Keira made the little boy cry by snatching his dummy out of his mouth. I have not seen many Mongolian kids with dummies, so perhaps Keira was as intrigued as I was!
These are some of the dancers, having a chat while they waited to the side of the oval before prancing onto the grass. The opening ceremony was supposed to start at 10am. It got going just after 11am.
Most of the time more action was going on outside the stadium than inside. A small market was set up selling clothes, shoes and toys. Many gers were set up to cook the khuusuur's described in an earlier post. They were the only food that we could buy - so Chris had some (mutton filling) and the rest of us found some fruit and boiled eggs for lunch. Several photographers had set up fancy backgrounds and families were paying to have their pictures taken in front of wrestlers, cityscapes or famous landmarks.
Lots of country guys with country attitude. These guys were hanging out on the stadium wall. Check out the tangled guys beneath them. It is common to drink airag during Nadaam (fermented mare's milk). Maybe the airag had got to them, or the wrestling was not that exciting during this part of the day.
Monks on mobiles. It just doesn't seem right. These guys were looking super cool in saffron.
There were many little princesses in the crowd, with Alesia suffering dress envy most of the day. But ice-creams were plentiful (15c) and kept Alesia and Keira happy. Keira is now very fond of a "pop" and loves to have one if I don't mind most of the "pop" on her t-shirt.
While I took lots of photos of the locals they got their own back by taking lots of photos of the girls. There were a few tourists around, but no white children. So Alesia and Keira were novelties and many families snapped photos on their mobile phone cameras with Alesia standing patiently with them.
These two girls below are taking photos of my girls. They illustrate some of the great get-up that people were wearing to the event. Nadaam is a big thing and the fashion stakes are high.
