In the rocky highlands of Mongolia, the food that fueled Genghis Khan's hordes is still building some of the strongest humans on earth. Capture their secrets—and build your own dynasty.
By: Donovan Webster; Travel Photography: Tony Law; Still Life: Zachary Zavislak
Sogda was drunk on fermented mare's milk, and he wanted to wrestle.
We were in southern Mongolia in mid-July, traditionally the time of
Naadam, Mongolia's national festival of archery, horsemanship, and wrestling. To celebrate Naadam every year, the country's nomads journey across Mongolia to the capital of Ulaanbaatar, Sogda's hometown. There they pitch their round yurtlike
gers in the green pastures outside the city, raise their tribe's brightly colored flags, and participate in daily sporting events and nightly parties, where banquets of grilled meat on sticks and fermented mare's milk, called
airag, help along the high spirits.
Sogda and I were on an expedition, searching the Gobi Desert for dinosaur bones, and naturally the giant Mongolian was homesick for Naadam's rough-and-tumble. So on this day, after visiting a nearby village called Daos for a snootful of airag and a few vodkas, he was now returning unsteadily to camp in search of a Naadam-esque throw-down. As he approached our tents, he was grinning. Then he began to shout in Mongolian: "I want to
wrestle…." He pointed my way and finished his thought: "And I want to wrestle
you."
Uh-oh.
Mongolians love combat and full-contact collision. When a sandstorm blew up a few weeks earlier—a miles-across curtain of grit 300 feet tall and hurtling toward us at 60 or 70 miles an hour—we Westerners cowered behind the cars while the Mongolians jumped in front of them, stripped to their waists, held out their arms, and laughed. They believe the whipped-up, ionized sand gives them extra strength.
Mongolians are fearless that way. And they're stronger than hell: Westerners are no match for any Mongolian's wrestling skill or physical power. A few days earlier, the smallest Mongolian on the trip, Timur, had been celebrating, and he, too, had expressed an interest in wrestling me. I'd made the mistake of assenting, and though I was 10 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than Timur, in seconds I was on the ground with newly bruised ribs.
So now, under another beautiful Gobi Desert sunset, Sogda (the biggest and strongest Mongolian on the trip) was ready to rumble. He grinned and bellowed as he crossed the gold-lit sand into camp, with the vertical and flinty peaks of the Altai range lit sunset-purple behind him. The closer he got, the more I was searching for a place to hide while asking the other Mongolians: "Couldn't we just grill some more meat on a stick?"
Mongolians love combat and full-contact collision. When a sandstorm blew up a few weeks earlier—a miles-across curtain of grit 300 feet tall and hurtling toward us at 60 or 70 miles an hour—we Westerners cowered behind the cars while the Mongolians jumped in front of them, stripped to their waists, held out their arms, and laughed. They believe the whipped-up, ionized sand gives them extra strength.
