NADAM

Nadam is kind of like our 4th of July.  Its the biggest holiday next to Sagan Sar and is held around the 20th of July.  Every year the date changes a little depending on which Buddhist leader gets to decide when the moon is right.  Here you see Elder Harper, the proud owner of a ticket to get into the opening ceremonies.  A little note about scalping tickets in Mongolia.  Tickets go on sale and people of course line up and wait for hours to buy 4 tickets each (the government's way to deter scalping).  Somehow they manage to collect quite a bundle of tickets.  If you wait in line you pay 8,000T a ticket.  Then the fun begins.  Our tickets this year ended up costing us around 60,000T each.  They were being kind to us.  Some tickets went for over 100,000T.  On our way to the opening ceremonies we came across many elders and sisters just outside of the  arena hoping to get inside, but without money.  Father Christmas (David) showed up just at the right moment and got a dozen sisters in and almost that many elders.  Money talks here and the price goes down as the festivities begin and the sellers can see getting 20,000 is better than nothing.  The elders are sweet talkers (they speak the language) and I think got in for 10,000 each.

 Here are some of the elders waiting to get inside, all dressed up in Nadam wear.

 Elder Harris and McHam look spiffy in their Nadam Dills.  Elder Harris asked me to change the band on his hat to pink to match his tie.

One of us got into the spirit of Nadam and the other didn't.  Actually my hontot top is really hot and scratchy.  David chose comfort over fashion.

There was an evening Mongolian opera performed in the open air in front of the Parliament Palace (you can see the statue of Chingiis Khan all lit up behind us).  It started at 10pm and ended at midnight.  We went with our friend Puje and she whispered to me what the story was.  After the opera was over we asked David if he knew what it was about and he told the whole story.  He doesn't need to understand the language.

This was the set and it was magnificent.  This was really a fun evening.  We thought it was going to rain and we heard thunder in the distance but the rain stayed away and we had a great time.