Festival of Manliness: The Competition

A 1 hour flight, a 2 hour layover, a 13 hour flight, a 14 hour time change, 3 hours in a taxi, 3 days in Japan, and another 6 hour flight. Finally, we landed in Mongolia.

There, we met our guide and driver, Tessa, which translates to Snow Candy. Tessa runs tours every week, mostly in southern Mongolia down in the Gobi Desert. A previously devout Christian, Tessa saw his world change completely a few years ago when he met with a shaman who told him he was chosen to be a shaman himself. He has been navigating those trials and tribulations ever since, all while working his full time job and taking care of his wife and child, with another on the way. Every month for two years, the head shaman informs him of a specific task he must complete every single day of that month. One month, the rule was simple: only eat animal stomachs.

When Tessa picked us up, we had another hour-long drive to get to the capital. Except, we hit brutal traffic. Then, we blew a tire. One hour quickly became two. Too exhausted to care, we skipped dinner in lieu of a good night's sleep.

When we finally got to our hotel and went to the room, our keys did not work. We went down to the lobby, the staff came up, and their keys did not work either. We waited for close to an hour before a manager finally ditched the electronic system entirely and opened the door with a manual key.

We threw our stuff down, plopped onto the bed, and slept. We got a couple of hours of peace before the fire alarms went off, blaring continuously for the next two hours. Then Daniel, rightfully so, made sure to watch the Columbia World Cup game at 4:00am.

At breakfast the next morning, we asked about the alarm. The staff shrugged it off: "Oh no, no fire. Just noise."

We went back to the room only to find ourselves locked out again. That cost us another 30 minutes of waiting. Finally, we grabbed our stuff and hit the road for a 6 hour drive, however first we needed to find out traditional outfits to be able to compete in Nadaam. Tessa managed to find a woman on Facebook who makes these traditional outfits entirely by hand. We met her in a supermarket parking lot, where we rummaged through her trunk to find the right sizes, right there in public to ensure a proper fit. To say these outfits are revealing is an understatement. They leave a serious amount of skin exposed. The shuudag, or wrestling briefs, barely covered my butt and rode incredibly high on the front. For the upper body, we wore a zodog, which is a long-sleeved, open-chest vest tied with a knot. Legend has it this open front design was specifically invented to ensure only men could compete in the festival. She also handed us each a malgai, a decorated, pointed traditional hat. We still needed to find the traditional leather boots to be fully compliant with the culture, but Tessa assured us we would be able to track those down at a local bazaar closer to Naadam.

On the way, we popped another tire. This time, we were in a much more difficult area to manage a change. All three of us worked quickly to put on the spare. The reality settled in: we now had no extra tires left. However, we eventually got to our destination for the evening.

A monastery built several hundred years ago, decorated inside and out ornately. 

The monastery was incredibly remote, sitting at the end of 30 plus miles of dirt roads at the top of a steppe.

Next to the monastery stood perhaps 12 yurts that overlooked the plains but surrounded by distant mountains. With no other guests here, this area filled with…  silence where we could hear the individual hooves of the herds of horse roaming the area below. Even the sky felt larger and closer. It’s just us and now it’s time to turn this place into a training ground. 

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/b2c169_0ec8d99cf1994a36a0a3734e198a4ae6/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Now, while Daniel and I had been getting in shape, we had zero experience in Mongolian wrestling. Daniel had done Jiu-Jitsu for several years, but we desperately needed to practice Bokh wrestling customs, form, and strategy.

The good news is that all men in Mongolia wrestle. No exceptions. It is not a requirement but a true national love for the sport. Most men we talked to said they wrestle even daily just for fun. This meant that even in the most remote places, we could find help. We asked one of the staff members at the yurts if they had someone who could show us the ropes.

They sent out a young boy, 17 years old. He was tall, skinny, and wrestled competitively. This was especially beneficial for me. There are not many small guys in this sport, so more than Daniel, I needed to learn how to leverage an opponent's strength against them.

As the boy put it when he spoke to me: "Me and you are not strong. Everyone there will be stronger and bigger than us. But they are not faster. Move with bravery and confidence." He first reminded us the rules. First person to have any part of their body except their hands or feet loses. No define ring. No punching but just about everything else goes. Single elimination. No weight classes.

He showed me a specific move: grappling at the shoulders, digging my right thumb inward and upward right under his left shoulder blade, immediately sweeping my left hand between his legs to grab his right leg, and pulling it toward me. From there, I would slide my right hand down to his forearm and throw him to the ground.

Then we both fought with him and then each other. Daniel and I wrestled until we were entirely exhausted, which did not take very long at all.

Tessa, seemingly unimpressed with our performance, said very seriously, if you want to get past round 1 you can pay, suggesting a bribe. 

Before the boy left, he shared a story of the time he competed in Naadam. He was 13 years old, won the first two rounds and in the third round was matched against a full size grown man, who immediately grabbed him with one hand and in one motion pulled him to the ground. This is the nature of Naadam. No weight classes, age restrictions or second chances. It is an incredibly unforgiving sport. We could potentially travel almost 10,000 miles for our match and tournament to be over in seconds.

The next day, we set out at 8:00 AM for what we thought was a 7 hour drive.

A couple of hours in, we were informed that we actually had to hurry. We needed to be at the village to register for the festival before 5:00 PM. This was news to us, but it should have been fine since we were supposed to arrive around 3:00 PM. Right?

Wrong.

I punched our destination into the google maps and saw our ETA was literally 5:02 PM. That estimate did not include any stops for lunch, cow or yak crossings, or gas refills. To make matters worse, we were still supposed to stop and buy the traditional boots to compete.

Now we were in trouble, and my stress was increasing. Tessa drove faster while continuously assuring us we would be there early. I was entirely unconvinced, and we stressed to him that we needed to make other arrangements.

Tessa made some calls to our camp, who called the festival organizers, who reiterated that we absolutely had to be there in person to register. Eventually, he tracked down the contact for the wrestling federation. For hours, the negotiations went back and forth.

Around 3:30 PM, we were still two hours out. Then, we got the call: we were officially registered.Now that we were officially registered, we could finally stop at the bazaar for our boots as intended. We pulled up right around 4:00 PM, just as most of the vendors were beginning to pack up for the day, which only added to the eerie, surreal atmosphere of the place.

The bazaar felt safe enough, but it looked incredibly sketchy. It was an absolute maze of narrow alleys constructed entirely out of stacked, rusted shipping containers. We had to weave deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, completely surrounded by locals and continuously asking for directions to find anyone selling the traditional boots.People wandered past us, picking through piles of used tools, old clothes, and the occasional steaming food stall. It genuinely felt like the kind of place where you could buy absolutely anything if you talked to the right person, looking less like a standard market and more like a hidden black market straight out of a James Bond movie.

It took us a solid chunk of time just to locate a stall that had the traditional boots. Once we finally bought them, we faced a whole new challenge: spending even longer trying to figure out how to escape the maze and find our way back out to the car.

After a combined travel total of over 9,000 miles (from Austin one way), we finally arrived at Khuvsgul Lake, located around 40 minutes from Khatgal village where we would compete the next day. Our yurt camp today sat overlooking the lake, with folks practicing archery, playing basketball, riding atv’s, renting boats and kayaks, etc. This is the place that locals go on vacation. It was lively and vibrant. 

Daniel wrestled a bit more with the locals while I stretched and relaxed, allowing my body to recover from the day before. I wanted zero soreness or stiffness for the competition. 

We piled into our yurts. Despite this being the hottest month of the year in Mongolia, the northern region was still quite cold, dropping into the 40s. We got a fire going in the yurt, managed a subpar night of sleep on what was essentially a plank of wood, and woke up early. Stepping outside the next morning, the brisk air sent immediate shivers down my spine. Our yurt was now completely surrounded by a herd of yaks. We ate breakfast and headed straight to Naadam.

We were told to be there at 9:00 AM, but we arrived at 8:30 AM to ensure there would be no issues.

The weather was brutal: mid 40s, pouring rain, and biting winds.

It was clear we had arrived way too early. Folks were still setting up, but this is a specific moment I love. You see vendors setting up hoping for a good turnout, event coordinators dealing with the stress of the big day, and most importantly, the competitors. This festival would host 64 wrestlers alongside several dozen kids racing horses in a 15 kilometer sprint. These jockeys were only 7 to 14 years old.

You could see the kids gearing up, running the horses, and waiting for officials to measure the horses to ensure they were of pure Mongol descent.

That pre-competition tension, anxiety, and nervousness in the air is a feeling I live for. People’s personalities change as they anxiously wait to be tested on something they have prepared for, not for 100 days like me, but for their entire lives. Winners receive serious prizes: Toyota Land Cruisers (which cost north of $100,000 here), thousands of dollars in cash, apartment leases, and much more. The prizes vary depending on the size of the village, but in a place where the average monthly income is $150, competitors do not leave things to chance.

After about three to four hours of waiting, we got word that it was time to change. We put on our proper Naadam outfits and received plenty of thumbs up and excited looks from locals happy to see us competing. The clothing, however, was not built for warmth. Two local kids saw us shivering, took pity, and gave us robes to keep warm while we waited in the freezing rain for our turn. That wait lasted another couple of hours more.

There were five foreigners competing in total, including two other Americans who waited with us. We all suffered through the weather, but I could not shake two distinct facts.

First, this was their hottest month of the year. To the locals, this was actually good weather and I’m sure they were quite happy about it instead of suffering. Although that is hard for me to imagine. 

Second, my boxing days taught me that battles are won first in the mind. Top ranking opponents got to choose exactly who they wanted to fight, meaning my opponent had selected me personally and knew exactly who I was. I knew he would be watching. Despite being incredibly cold and wet,  I refused to let discomfort set in. I stood stoic, unwavering, and watched the competition unfold until it was finally time to derobe.

They announced all four of us Americans at the exact same time, and we all fought locals simultaneously in different areas of the arena.

They called our names. I exited the bleachers and stripped off the warm robe. I crouched down, slapped the front of my thighs twice and the back once to signal I was ready, and jogged toward my coach, performing the traditional eagle dance along the way. I danced around my coach as he removed my traditional hat, proceeded to dance toward the flags where I took a bow, and then circled back to my coach where my competitor waited.

He was a large man, but not a fat man. He had probably 60 plus pounds of muscle on me and a wide smile that showed he was eagerly awaiting the matchup.

Someone from the crowd yelled out, “COME ON WHITE BOY!”

My opponent and I danced around each other briefly, swatting at each other's arms. My eyes pin pointed to the exact spot where I waited for my exact moment to dig my thumb upward into his shoulder blade. I shook my left hand, a reminder to my body that it was no time to be numb to the cold. Now, we fight.

I stepped inward, and we locked arms at the forearms.

I remembered advice from days earlier telling me not to worry about forearm grabs because they are easy to escape. Not this one. I could feel each of his fingers tightening around my forearms like a boa constrictor preparing its meal. Quickly and effortlessly, he jolted me forward and downward, burying my face and chest straight into the mud.

Before I could even process the loss, my opponent reached down with one hand, grabbed me by the traditional shoulder wear, and hoisted me completely back to my feet.

We smiled, shook hands, and performed the customary walk under his arm where he gave me the traditional slap on the butt. I turned to the section of the bleachers that had cheered for the white boy, lifted a fist, and watched them cheer.

I returned to the bleachers where the locals shared their support with cheers, handshakes, and thumbs up. The two other Americans were already back, and Daniel's fight was just beginning.Daniel’s opponent also stood tall and was ripped. We saw him earlier in the day where Daniel pointed out both of his ears had cauliflower ear, a sign of a strong fighter. We all lost expeditiously.

Daniel came back, we fist bumped and celebrated the loses and the effort of doing something incredible.  I did not see the other Americans' matches, but Daniel and I can comfortably say we went up against true warriors and had an incredible time.

Bodies still frozen, we rushed off to change before sharing some roe deer dumplings in a nearby wood burning yurt with some American and English girls we had met the night before. They were incredible sports, suffering through the freezing cold just to watch our late in the day fight and take photos. One of them is a sports photographer who captured, well you can tell what photos are hers.

We competed in an incredible tradition that, for the Mongols, is not just a once a year festival but a daily way of life. We stayed true to the tradition regarding apparel, ceremony, and the dance. It was an absolutely unforgettable journey. We have another week here, so we will likely wrestle more and maybe find another local Naadam nearby. Tonight, though, we drink.