Day 2 of Nadaam was relatively uneventful. Most of the day was lost to arranging and taking transportation out to the steppe. I caught the tail end of the last horse race and then wandered amongst the temporary ger village that is formed by all the nomads coming in to see the games.

On the morning of the third day I was adopted by a Mongolian family and ended up spending the day with them. We quickly established that I did not know any Mongolian and they knew no English. We resorted to nonverbal communication for most of the day. I eventually ended up pulling out my little point and shoot camera and this was a big hit. The kids couldn’t get enough pictures of themselves and the rest of the family posed in various configurations for over an hour.

They were all quite familiar with the immediate gratification available from digital cameras and the whole family wanted to be in pictures. I learned that Mongolians do not smile when posing for pictures; their conditioned tendency is to look stern and serious. I suppose this is a holdover from the soviet era but everyone eventually warmed up and smiles emerged.

The food making and the arig stirring in a ger are ceaseless activities and eventually I decided to try my hand at it. I tried making mutton dumplings and airag, which is fermented mares milk. My skill with rolling the dough and properly folding over the dumplings was surprisingly poor, but this of course also kept everyone laughing. Making airag is much more simple and more in line with my domestic skill level. The process of creating the arig consists of

1. milking the horse

2. pouring the milk into a barrel or goat skin sack

3. stirring it endlessly

After a few days the fermentation process turns it into a low potency alcohol drink. New milk is added each day on top of the old milk and it becomes a perpetual process of fermentation and dilution. It apparently takes 1000+ strokes throughout the day to keep the fermentation process going and the milk from spoiling.

Around mid day we left for the games with a bucket full of mutton dumpling and a few jugs of airag.

Nadaam officially ends after 2 days with a lackluster closing ceremony back in UB. I had heard that the day following the official end of Nadaam there would be nomads who conducted a mini Nadaam out on the steppe. This was my reason for being here the 3^rd day and I was not disappointed. This version of Nadaam involved lines drawn in the dirt and crowding around the competitors.

This was is the recommended Nadaam if you happen to be in Mongolia in July, much better than trying to fight jostling crowds in a stadium.