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The chaos theory of Mongolia

I returned to Mongolia 15 years ago after an absence of 13 years, save for the occasional 2-week leave from work, and that time I spent a semester and a half at a local university drinking endless cups of brown, watery 150 Tugrik instant MaCcoffee at the café strangely, or perhaps egotistically, named "In my memory", writing the first and so far the only book that got us into trouble with the local intelligence who apparently had little else to do than to pore through the ramblings of teenagers to catch the tell-tale signs of drug dealery. But I digress. When you visit a country for a short period, be it home or not, you hardly have time to immerse yourself in the spirit of the country and the city and feel the nitty gritty and dirty shiny of it all. So after 13 years, it took me a while to readjust and finally understand what the hometown of my childhood had become.  The most striking, ubiquitous, and inescapable feature was and still, unfortunately, is the traffic. In 2008,...

Random Tsagaan Sar Image

 
MP D.Batbayar, a formerly known as the sumo wrestler Kyokushūzan Noboru. He was the first Mongolian wrestler to reach the higher division in sumo, and retired under extortion and threats by the Japanese yakuza.
Seen here dressed in an impressively excessive and colourful traditional-ish outfit leaving an official Tsagaan Sar function. He has this look about him as if he's watching out for animal rights activists with buckets of paint. Not that we have any paint-throwing activists in Mongolia, a country where everyone wears fur / leather products. This is something that would require its own discussion forum.

For more of parliamentary Tsagaan Sar's fashion statements, check out news.mn photo gallery.

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