Naadam Festival

Every July, all of Mongolia stops to celebrate. In Ulaanbaatar's National Stadium, hundreds of wrestlers enter performing the eagle dance; out on the steppe beyond the city, children on horseback gallop dozens of kilometres in one go; on the archery range, bowmen aim at distant leather targets while judges sing out "Uukhai" to score. Naadam is the three manly skills handed down from the age of Genghis Khan, and the grandest national holiday of the Mongolian year.