Naadam is the one date on the Mongolian calendar that everything else bends around. For three days in July the country stops to wrestle, shoot and race, and the capital fills with families in their best deel. It is a national holiday, a sports championship and a family reunion at once, and it has been held in some form since the empire.
We do it two ways in the same week. In Ulaanbaatar you sit in reserved seats for the opening ceremony and the wrestling, with a host beside you who can explain why the crowd just roared. Then we drive out to a countryside naadam, a smaller one, where the horse race finishes in a cloud of dust beside the road and the winning jockey is nine years old and everyone knows his grandmother. Most visitors only see the first. The second is the one you will talk about.
The city is full that week and the good hotels go early, so this is a festival we plan from March. We hold the seats, the rooms and the drivers, then build the rest of the trip around the three days.
