Tsagaan Sar I

Dear all

Sorry for letting you wait some weeks, but work as well as leisure stress didn’t allow me to work too much on the blog. This entry is about Tsagaan Sar - the Mongolian’s New Year’s Eve. Tsagaan Sar is celebrated on the first new moon after the winter solstice following the lunar calendar like for example in China and in many South-East Asian countries.

I was incredibly lucky that I together with my flatmate Simon have been invited to celebrate the traditional Tsagaan Sar with a family living in Delgerkhangai. Thank you so much for the invitation Naraa! This was for sure the greatest and most eventful week I had in Mongolia so far! This is part one of two, comprising the days before the holidays really started.

The first thing I think about when looking back is eating and drinking all the time. Every day we visited up to 10 families and on every stop we were pressured to eat as much as we could eat and were forced to drink all kind of alcoholic drinks. But this week was much, much more and the following pictures shall give you a small impression about it.

Besides eating Buuz and drinking Wodka, the people and traditions were the strongest impressions I experienced in these days. When visiting a family, the first thing that  has to be done is to exchange snuff tobaco. Every traditional Mongolian owns a small pot, some kind of bottle with snuff and when you come to someone elses home everybody has to exchange the pot with everybody else. While doing so it is very important that you take it with your right hand and support your arm with you left hand. Then you take a sniff and give it back. This is usually done with everybody in the room, also with the people that do not own snuff (Such as me).

This is the great landscape of the Gobi and the home of the families we have visited. Nearly all of them live in Gers

 One of the families owned camels and we could have a short ride.

 Short camel shepherd

Nomad life

One important aspect  on all the visits was making group pictures with everyone dressed up in their traditional, colourful Deel.

 Identical twins..

 Family in red

Big group picture

Part of the adventure was driving in a car. Our awesome russian van obviously had a capacity for 26 passengers. Roads are non-existent in these parts, drivers also have to drink wodka at every family and snowy underground is no reason to slow down.

So it might happen that you get stuck in the snow...

 ...and you have to push out the car.

Another common way to travel is on a motorbike. 4 people + cattle is the capacity of these asian motorbikes, but I chose to ride alone.

The Trip to the Gobi was not only about eating and drinking, but on one friends place we could also help with their daily work which is for example collecting bullshit that is used for heating...

...or guiding a herd of around 1000 animals to the next waterhole and pump drinking water for the cattle as well as for the household of the family we stayed at.

 All this happened just before Tsagaan Sar really began and is going to be continued...