For its 11th year, The Culture Naadam will bring new festive spirit to the sweeping Hui Doloon Hudag Valley on July 11 and 12.

“Culture Naadam” is a multi-stakeholder project involving heritage practitioners, artisans, artists, state parties, educational institutes, civil society organizations, community-based organizations, and private businesses, initiated by METAA Planning and Consulting Company (Korea), with a goal to promote Mongolia’s nomadic culture, custom traditions to local and international audiences and to support commu­nity involvement in cultural and creative activities.

Each year Kazakh hunters in Bayan-Ulgii province join the renowned Golden Eagle festival with their trained Golden Eagles, known as Berkut (Burged in Mongolian), to enter them into competitions testing speed, agility, and accuracy. Ceremonies, dance performances, traditional Kazakh games, a parade in the provincial capital’s city square, and a Kazakh play in honor of the hunters and their eagles.
Naadam is a Mongolian holiday that takes place between the 11th and 13th of July annually and is celebrated throughout the entire country with great fanfare.“Naadam” in Mongolian means “games,” which makes sense since the holiday is primarily centered on three Mongolian pastimes: wrestling, horse racing, and archery. Naadam is sometimes called “Eriin Gurvan Naadam,” meaning “the Three Games of Men.” In recent times, however, women have also participated in horse racing and archery, though not yet in wrestling.

Chinggis Khaan was not a conqueror who took over the world, but a man of honor who united all the Mongolians who were scattered, strengthened the nomadic state, brought law and order, implemented cultural and economical reforms, and set the beginning of the great rise of Mongolians. Mongolians revere his wisdom rather than his conquests. Nowadays, you can see many tributes to Chinggis Khaan, a man of the millennium, in Ulaanbaatar.