Now that I am back in the states I feel like it might be time to talk about the neo-nazis in Mongolia. There are two confusing parts to this. First, Swastikas are a traditional Mongolian symbol. They are everywhere, including religious sites. It is often hard to tell what they mean. Second, traditional Nazi ideology […]
Tag Archives: Mongolia
The spray of blood from fighting pit bulls. Doves flying around the golden statue. The scream of goats being combed. The buttery taste of roasted fat. The dry leathery hands of the shaman I met on the street. The taste of fresh blood sausage. The jolt of a horse stumbling in a marmot hole. The way […]
During the Independent Study Project period I kind of stopped writing this because I was busy researching, writing, or worrying like hell. So I never really talked about all the stuff I learned about Mongolian wrestling. Since I wrote about thirty pages on the subject, I’m not going to say everything but here’s the many […]
We learned to put up our own ger for the final excursion. Someone decided that we could figure it out on our own, so it took about two hours longer than it would if we knew what we were doing. It seems you rig up the lattice around the sids first. Then you hold up […]
This is another popular song in Mongolia. The title and refrain literally mean, “Hello Mother.”
So I was doing an interview in the Wrestling Palace and when it was done we found this going on. It seems to be a Judo competition in honor of the police. These are the competitors. This is the ceiling of the Wrestling Palace with banners depicting the Eight Auspicious Symbols of Buddhism. The arena. […]
So I recently watched the movie The Way Back. It’s a story about a group of men who escaped from a gulag and walked all the way to India. The hardest part of the journey is through the Gobi. There’s one part where they encounter a group of Mongolians, who they fear because Mongolia is […]
The phrase “guys, this is the serious” came from an older, ex-military, rather grim, man who really wanted us to take him seriously. It was a beautiful moment. Anyway some points of culture. -Bathrooms are not required to have toilet paper. You’d think this would be a priority, but no, almost half the bathrooms I […]
I think that is a description of the best day possible. I now understand why Mongolian wrestling uniforms are…. what they are. They began, literally thousands of years ago, as a deel and pants. They had minimal standard rules so people could do what they wanted. And as in most cloth martial arts (Judo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) having […]
Near our apartment. I’m still not sure what’s going on here. Near an apartment we nearly took. Near our apartment again. In the square outside our window.
