In Mongolia, similar festivals celebrate the martial spirit through competitions in three sports: archery, horse racing, and wrestling.
Flying arrows and thundering horses would be out of place on a small lawn in Central Park, but traditional Mongolian wrestling, featuring the traditionally skimpy yet long-sleeved outfits, needs little more than a flat patch of grass. The basics: single elimination; no weight classes; no time limit; touch the ground even once with any part of your body other than your feet, and you're out. In the photo above, onlookers include two monks at the table of honor on the left, the emcee at center, and the peanut gallery on high; the tournament's eventual winner wears blue.
Refreshments — untouched, that I saw, by the wrestlers, but quickly set upon, when they popped up here and there, by the crowd — included lamb noodle salad; very oily fried meat pies; thick-skinned beef dumplings, accompanied by chicken kebabs and naan from the Indian restaurant where they were cooked and by squirt-bottle ketchup; commercially packaged Ukrainian sunflower halva with peanut; and assorted confections, walked about at the end of the festivities by an organizer. In the company of covered almonds and pretzels were two more-distinctively Mongolian items: circular, embossed butter cookies and small pale extrusions of sweetened dry curds. One's plenty.
Mongols Naadam Celebration
To the west of Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, Manhattan
www.Facebook.com/events/1545379822437340
(The 2016 celebration was held on July 9)
