"Altargana" to be held under auspices of Premier

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The "Altargana" festival of the Buryats will be celebrated this July 18-21 under auspices of the Prime Minister of Mongolia. The first-ever Altargana ran was in 1994 in our Khentii aimag to promote folk arts and culture of the Buryats living in Mongolia, Russia and China. This year, the festival will be marked in this province again, together with representatives of five countries, says M.Khuderbaatar, a chairperson of the Festival Organizing Committee and advisor to the PM. The festival, which takes place every two year, includes competitions of wrestling, beauty pageant and folk song singing and is expected to be attended by at least 10 thousand people. The previous Altargana took place in Aga Buryatia, an administrative division of Zabaykalsky Krai of Russia. The Buryats or the Buryat-Mongols numbering approximately 500,000, are the largest indigenous (aboriginal) group in Siberia, mainly concentrated in their homeland, the Buryat Republic, a federal subject of Russia. They are the major northern subgroup of the Mongols.