steppes of the Khovsgol area (Ollenburg 2006), staying in gers amidst
the nomadic herds, eating local food and interacting with local nomad
families, and taking part in the annual festival of sports and horses, the
Naadam. Comments from participants in this tour, obtained in 2005,
confirm that the cultural landscape was indeed the principal drawcard
for visiting the region; and that the opportunities to travel through it
on horseback, to visit the Naadam, and to experience immersion in local communities, were strong additional inducements.
The Naadam Festival is the highlight of the Mongolian social and
cultural year. It is held in regional centers throughout the country
and is famous for the ‘‘three manly sports’’ of horse racing, wrestling,
and archery. Indeed, it is reported that Genghis Khan abandoned his
campaigns temporarily in order to be in Mongolia for Naadam, before
returning to the battlefront. The national Naadam Festival in Mongolia’s capital at Ulan Bator has become highly commoditized for tourism, but the regional festivals such as that at Renchinlkhumbe in
Khovsgol Province are relatively unmodified. Interestingly, the tour
operator mentioned above has brought some traditional Mongolian
bows to Renchinlkhumbe so that the locals could reinstate archery
competitions which had previously been abandoned (Ollenburg 2006).
Commoditization identifies specific aspects of cultural heritage that
developers believe tourists are prepared to pay for. Various elements of
the Mongolian grassland cultural landscape have indeed been commoditized and staged for different tourist markets. Unlike the Khovsgol tour described above, which appeals to North American and
European clients who want to experience the cultural landscape at
its most traditional, elsewhere in Mongolia there are highly commoditized representations of the same cultural landscape. There are ger
camps built specifically for tourists along the lake shores in Khovsgol
Nuur National Park (Robbins 2006), in Gun-Galuut Nature Reserve
(Selena Travel 2006), in Gobi Gurbansaikhan National Park (Saffery
2000), and at Underdov (Yu and Goulden 2006).
All these sources of evidence indicate that most arrivals to Mongolia
are indeed attracted by the cultural landscape with its steppes and
skies, herds and horsemen, traditional nomadic ger camps, and the
same skills and sports which have been popular since the days of Genghis Khan. Even though there are also populations of rare wildlife such
as wild ass, argali, and Przewalski’s Horse, for example, few expect to
see them and even fewer will actually do so. It is the domesticated Mongolian horses of the nomadic tribes that tourists come to see, not running wild but ridden skilfully by the herdsmen and their children.