The Golden Eagle Festival

The morning finally arrived.

After all the effort it had taken to get to western Mongolia, and after several days staying with a Kazakh family near Sagsai, it was time for the Golden Eagle Festival.

I left the yurt and returned to Ölgii, where I was staying at Cozy Camp. The festival grounds were outside town in a broad, barren valley surrounded by mountains.

My ticket for the two-day festival cost about $50.

I had come a very long way for this ticket.

Two Golden Eagle Festivals

There is one odd thing about the Golden Eagle Festival.

There are actually two of them.

For years, two organizations were involved in putting on the festival. Then they had a falling out. For the last six or seven years, the two rival organizations have each held their own Golden Eagle Festival—on the same weekend.

It seems a little silly to me. You travel halfway around the world to attend the Golden Eagle Festival only to discover there are two Golden Eagle Festivals happening at essentially the same time.

But that’s the way it is.

Waiting for the Eagles

We arrived early.

There wasn’t much there yet except mountains, an enormous open landscape and vendors setting up around the grounds.

I bought a leather belt for very little money. T-shirts were considerably more expensive.

And there was coffee, which was important.

Gradually the grounds began filling with people.

Then the eagle hunters arrived.

They rode in on horseback, many dressed in traditional Kazakh clothing, with enormous golden eagles perched on their arms.

Suddenly the festival had begun.

There were more than 70 competitors, although perhaps 40-some were assembled in front of us during the opening ceremony. The hunters lined up with their horses and eagles in front of the reviewing stand. Announcements were made in Kazakh and English, and the Mongolian national anthem was played.

The clothing was colorful and elaborate—fur coats, traditional hats and decorated horses.

And then there were the eagles.

Up close, a golden eagle is an imposing animal.

I had already spent time with Armand and his eagle, Arik, near Sagsai, so I had some idea of what went into training one. Now I was looking at dozens of hunters and birds together.

Photographers were everywhere.

I was taking plenty of pictures myself.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I met an older American couple from The Villages in Florida. We started talking and somehow ended up discussing old railroad corridors in America that have been converted into recreational bicycle trails—rail trails.

It had absolutely nothing to do with golden eagles.

But that’s one of the things I enjoy about traveling. You go to Mongolia to watch Kazakh eagle hunters and come home thinking about bicycle trails in America.

Calling the Eagles

The major competition on the first day involved calling the eagles.

The hunter rides into the arena on horseback while his eagle is taken high onto a nearby hillside. The bird is released, and the hunter calls it while swinging a lure made from meat and animal fur.

The eagle is supposed to recognize its hunter, fly down from the mountain and attack the lure—or sometimes land on the hunter’s arm.

Scoring circles were marked on the ground at different distances, with points awarded according to the hunter’s position and how quickly the eagle responded.

At least, that’s how it was supposed to work.

A surprising number of eagles were released, looked around and apparently decided they had something better to do.

They flew off.

The hunter would be below calling and swinging the lure while his eagle went somewhere else.

After watching the private demonstration near Sagsai, I had assumed these birds would simply fly directly to their hunters.

Not necessarily.

I was particularly interested in Armand and Arik.

Armand had seemed confident the previous day that Arik was ready. I had watched them practice and was looking forward to seeing them compete.

Arik was released.

And Arik did not cooperate.

It was disappointing after seeing what the bird could do the day before.

But it also made the competition more interesting. These weren’t machines being released from the hillside. They were wild animals trained to work with humans.

Sometimes they apparently had their own ideas.

Horses, Wrestling and Music

The festival wasn’t only about eagles.

One of the most entertaining events was horseback wrestling.

Two shirtless men ride bareback and grapple with one another, each trying to pull the other from his horse. They’re holding onto their horses largely with their legs while wrestling another very strong man who is trying to do exactly the same thing.

It was great fun to watch.

I have enough trouble staying on a horse when nobody is trying to pull me off.

There was also traditional music and dancing during the middle of the day.

One performer particularly caught my attention because he was singing from deep in his throat—the distinctive style of throat singing associated with Mongolia and other parts of Central Asia.

I had heard recordings of throat singing before. Hearing it performed live in western Mongolia was something quite different.

I liked it a lot.

By the end of Day 1 I had seen eagle hunters, birds that sometimes cooperated and sometimes didn’t, bareback wrestlers, traditional music and dancing, and more horses than I could count.

Then came Day 2.

Day Two

The weather was much better.

The sky was clearer, and most importantly for me, it wasn’t nearly as cold.

The second day began with another round of eagle calling.

This time the quality of the competition was noticeably different.

These were the hunters and birds that had advanced, and nearly all of the eagles responded successfully.

Some were astonishingly fast.

The eagle would be released high on the hill, the hunter would begin calling and swinging the lure, and suddenly this enormous bird would come racing down toward the arena.

Some reached their hunter or the lure in something like 16, 17 or 18 seconds.

Watching a golden eagle descend at speed is very different from watching one sitting quietly on someone’s arm.

The wings come back, the bird accelerates, and suddenly it is coming straight toward the ground.

Then, at the last moment, it attacks the lure or lands on the hunter.

After watching for a while, we stopped for lunch.

Banu had arranged a tent, and Maika—the cook who had been with us earlier in the tour—prepared lunch. I ate with some of the other guests, including Peter and two women from Australia.

Then we went back outside.

The afternoon was about to get considerably more exciting.

Kokpar

The final major event I watched was called kokpar.

There are variations of this game throughout Central Asia, and I had already seen another form of it at the World Nomad Games in Kyrgyzstan.

This version was different.

And considerably more personal.

Two riders on horseback compete over the carcass of a freshly killed goat, with the head and lower legs removed.

One rider picks up the goat. The second rider grabs it.

And then they try to take it away from each other.

For the first portion of the contest, both men can use two hands. After that they have to hold the goat with one hand.

They pull.

The horses pull.

The riders gallop and turn, trying to use both their own strength and the power of their horses to wrench the goat away from the other man.

These are strong men on strong horses fighting over a very heavy object.

It is difficult to appreciate how physical the contest is until you see it up close.

There were about 60 riders or competitors, making roughly 30 initial pairings.

Those contests took quite a while.

Then the winners advanced.

Thirty became approximately 15.

And the competition became progressively more aggressive.

These were now the strongest riders.

Eventually we were down to the final few.

And then things went completely off the rails.

What Just Happened?

One competitor began whipping the other competitor with his riding whip.

Almost immediately, horses and riders came charging onto the field.

Not two or three.

Maybe 30 or 40.

Suddenly there was a melee in the middle of the arena.

People were yelling and screaming. Riders were pushing into one another. Horses were everywhere. The police, who were on foot, ran onto the field trying to separate everyone.

For a couple of minutes there was complete chaos.

I think I managed to capture at least some of it on video.

Eventually things began to settle down.

The riders moved back.

People were still shouting, but order was gradually restored.

There were one or two more contests.

And then something happened that I still find funny.

Someone took the goat.

And rode away.

Not around the arena.

Away.

He headed out across the open countryside with the goat, and suddenly a huge group of mounted riders took off after him.

Twenty horses.

Maybe 30.

Maybe 40.

There they went, disappearing across the landscape in pursuit of the man who had apparently stolen the goat.

And that was essentially the end of the competition.

I’m not sure anyone could have scripted a better ending to the kokpar.

And the Winners Are…

There was still one piece of official business left: the awards ceremony.

A stage had been set up with places for the winners, and they worked their way through the various competitions, announcing the results and presenting prizes, medals and certificates.

Finally they came to the Golden Eagle competition itself.

Fourth place received an award, certificate and medal.

Third place received the same recognition along with 1 million Mongolian tögrög.

Second place received 1.5 million tögrög, along with the awards.

And then came first place.

The grand prize was a brand-new motorcycle.

The winner stood there with his medals and certificates—and a new motorcycle to take home.

And with that, it was over.

After two days of eagles swooping down from mountains, horses racing across the field, wrestling, music, dancing and finally the chaos of the kokpar competition, the ending was surprisingly simple.

People just started drifting away.

The eagle hunters left with their birds. Horses were led away. Vendors began packing up. The crowds that had temporarily filled this otherwise empty patch of western Mongolia slowly disappeared.

The Golden Eagle Festival was finished.

Was It Worth Coming?

Absolutely.

This was the 27th Golden Eagle Festival, and it has become an important event for Ölgii.

It obviously attracts tourists, and tourism brings money into a relatively remote part of Mongolia. Visitors pay for festival tickets, hotels, guides, drivers, food and souvenirs. I certainly contributed my share. I spent several hundred dollars on souvenirs alone.

But I didn’t come here because of the economics.

I came because I wanted to see something I might never have another opportunity to see.

There is always a question with events like this about how much is tradition and how much is being presented for tourists. Clearly the Golden Eagle Festival has become a tourist attraction.

But the tradition behind it is real.

I had seen that before the festival.

I had stayed with a Kazakh family. I had ridden into the countryside. I had watched Armand train Arik when there was no crowd watching. These eagles aren’t brought out of a cage once a year for tourists. The relationship between the hunters and their birds exists outside the festival grounds.

The festival puts that tradition on display.

And I’m very glad I came.

Getting here wasn’t easy.

Getting out, apparently, isn’t going to be particularly easy either.

Tomorrow afternoon, at about 3:00, I’m supposed to get on a bus in Ölgii.

If everything goes according to plan, sometime around 24 or 25 hours later I will arrive in Ulaanbaatar.

There was an opportunity to fly and get there considerably sooner, but I decided against it. My hotel is already arranged, my flight to Beijing is set, and I have enough time in Ulaanbaatar.

Besides, after everything it took to get to the Golden Eagle Festival, perhaps it is appropriate that leaving should be an adventure too.

That, however, is another story.