Eagle festival organized for 7th year in UB

On March 5, ‘Eagle Festival-2014’ was organized for the 7th year at Chinggisiin Khuree Tourism Complex in Jargalantiin Am at Bogd Khaan Mountain in Ulaanbaatar, preceding Nowruz, the spring holiday of Kazakh people This year, eighteen eagle hunters arrived from Bayan-Ulgii Aimag, 2000km from Ulaanbaatar, to compete in the festival. The youngest participant was 21 years old while the oldest was 61. Present at the opening of the festival being organized to increase the number of tourists in winter and develop winter tourism, were MP A.Bakei, Foreign Affairs Minister L.Bold, Deputy Minister for Culture, Sports and Tourism M.Tumenjargal, Bayan-Ulgii Aimag’s administration officials and others. During the ceremony, they awarded two eagle hunters with medals of Leading Worker of the Tourism Sector and an eagle hunter with ‘Honorary Certificate’ from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The best five eagle hunters were selected according to six qualifications including the best national costume, horse harness, hunting gear, how hunters habituated their eagles to themselves and hunting skills of the eagles. Coinciding with the competition, the Wildlife Study and Conservation Center of Mongolia displayed a photo exhibition of games in Mongolia. A 60-year old A.Shaimurat who has trained eagles for 20 years was selected as the best eagle hunter. He is last year’s winning eagle hunter of Bayan-Ulgii Aimag and also successfully participated in the International Eagle Festival held last October in Kazakhstan, taking the 5th place. Other interesting games organized during the Eagle Festival were traditional Kazakh games known Kekbar and tent shawl with money from the ground. At the event, B. Khaizam, an eagle hunter from Sagsai Soum of Bayan-Ulgii Aimag, said “I have trained eagles for 40 years and am participating in the festival with the fifth eagle I have trained. An eagle is trained for hunting while being an eaglet, and is put back into nature after hunting for 10-15 years. Every Kazakh man who reaches 15 years old starts training eagles. An eagle eats a minimum of 500gr of meat in a day. I have participated in this festival for five consecutive years”. Also Ms. Siera-Leon from France said, “It is almost a month since I arrived in Mongolia. It is my first time to see an Eagle Festival. It seems very interesting. The most amazing thing of the festival was when owners called their eagles, the eagles fly to the owners and also when they grabbed meat from ground so fast and flew away. I had my photo taken with an eagle on my hand. It was not a scary thing. I came here straight after reading information about the festival from a website. It seems necessary to advertise through mass media prior to organization of the festival”. The Festival was first organized in Bayan-Ulgii Aimag in 2000, the home province of eagle hunters that have been promoting their traditional culture since early times. In order to bring the Kazakh people festival close to local and foreign visitors of the capital city, organizers have been conducting the Eagle Festival for 7 consecutive years near Ulaanbaatar. In the last 4 years, it was organized at Chinggisiin Khuree Tourism Complex in Bogd Khaan Mountain, Ulaanbaatar. The tradition of eagle hunting has a history of about 3,500 years. According to history, Kazakh people trained game including eagles and falcons for hunting around the 12-13th Century. Year by year, the number of domestic and foreign tourists are considerably increasing to see the Eagle Festival. This year, more than 500 tourists saw the Festival and half of them were foreigners. Kazakh people celebrate the ‘Eagle Festival’ every year which provides an opportunity to introduce Kazakh people’s lifestyle and traditions. Beginning in the 1990s, the festival started being organized every autumn in Bugat and Sagsai soums of Bayan-Ulgii Aimag. There are over 400 hunters registered in the aimag, who hunt with eagles.