Uriankhai Archers
Mongolia 2014
I have been corrected. These men are not Tuvan. They are Uriankhai. But the blog about Tuva is correct.
I was told that the archers competing as part of the Eagle Festival were of Tuvan descent. Tuva lies adjacent to Mongolia but is still under the control of Russia. Remember Vladimir Putin riding horseback sans shirt? Well, he was in Tuva.
Tuvan people and culture are similar to Mongolian. They are both nomadic people. Their religion is Buddhist, although Mongolia, now freed from the Russian yoke, is returning to their pre-Buddhist animist beliefs. They are both horse breeders and raise cashmere goats and sheep. They both live in gers (yurts). If you were to stray over the border from Mongolia into Tuva, you would not notice a difference. Well, I don’t know about the language but maybe it would be understandable by a Mongolian.
Tuvans are famous for throat singing. Throat singing is popular among the Mongolians, too, but Tuvan throat singing was made famous by Richard Feynman, an American physicist who visited Tuva in the 1990’s.
To hear some fabulous throat singing, click here: