Bayan-Ulgii /MONTSAME/. The Eagle Festival-2022 will be organized on October 1-2 in
Bugat soum of Bayan-Ulgii aimag by the Mongolian Eagle Hunters’ Association in
collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, the Governor’s
Office of Bayan-Ulgii aimag, and the aimag’s Department of Environment and
Tourism.

Some
100 eagle trainers from 13 soums of the aimag are expected to participate in
the traditional festival, maintaining the heritage and showing off trainer’s
and bird’s skills.

The
festival participants will compete for awards of Best Turned Out Eagle and
Owner, Best Eagle at Hunting Prey, and Best Eagle at locating its owner from a
distance, dressed in full eagle hunting regalia and mounted on groomed
decorated horses and Bushkashi-goatskin tug of war on horseback.

As
Mongolia is one of the few remaining countries that keep the
6000-year-old tradition of eagle hunting, the festival is organized twice a
year, with one taking place in Ulaanbaatar in spring and the other in
Bayan-Ulgii aimag in fall.


The
event, which started being organized in 2000, aims at reviving eagle hunting
customs and traditions of Kazakh people, inheriting the culture of hunting with
eagles to the young generation, publicizing this tradition to tourists and
making it a tourism product.

In
2010, UNESCO inscribed the practice of eagle hunting also known as Falconry to
its Representative List of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity.