new-old fashion

I was very surprised to find many young women wearing yugata (summer kimono) in the the streets of Tokyo, specially on sunday. Is it a new fashion to wear traditional clothes ? Well, yugata are much easier to put than traditional kimono.
Anyway, they are really lovely in their flowerish dress !

In a buddhist temple

In Tokyo, we have visited two buddhist temples, famous for their sculptures, especially many buddhas in stones.
Some of the small temples are quite cute...


But don't mistaken, those small temples are devoted to the unborn children...One of those giant tokyo crow decided to be part of my foto. Then, he tried to eat the hat of the statue !

Some of the 500 small buddhas, who stay in the temple.

Another nice statues were the seven lucky gods. A little more joyful than our suferring christ, don't you think ?

Trip to taiga : the Tsaatan people

The Tsaatan people are ethnically tuvan and have been stuck in Mongolia during the second world war. They are quite few, about 300, still living nomadically in the taiga in winter or on higher places in summer. The summer camp we visited had about 25 families, spread sometime far from each other.


The summer tipi that our host family used is bigger than the winter one but some people still use the winter one in summer. The height of the winter's one is just enough to stand up in the middle.
The oven is always in the center. As the temperature was like winter in Switzerland or Japan, there was always a fire to heat the tipi.

Dried reindeer meat. In opposition to most of the reindeers herders in the world, the Tsaatan rarely eat their reindeers. They will sometime slaughter an old reindeer and dry its meat to keep it as long as possible.

The reindeer milk is very precious to make cheese (which tastes almost like Emmenthal !) or butter. We both liked it very much.

The boy of the host family was specially shy but very friendly with his reindeers.

Trip to taiga : Tsaagan Nuur (white lake)

Tsaagan Nuur is the last village before the taiga. It's the central village of lots of tsaatan people.

When we came back from the taiga, it was the last day of Nadam, the national sport festival. In every village and city, this is the occasion to make a huge party. Many people from countryside also come for this occasion, of course mostly by horse. So, we could see some horse-parking:

The wrestling "stadium" :

And lots of people selling anything to all those visitors. Looks like a drive-in system for horses.

Trip to Bayan-Olgii : Khoton Nuur

Our final destination of this travel was a lake "Khoton Nuur" where is just to the border of China.The place could look like Leman lake 3000 years ago when there was nobody living around. The landscape was so familiar !

Since our Kazakh guide has family everywhere in Bayan Olgii, we could stay by her uncle and cousin's gher who were still in true nomadic life style.
They collaborate to herd 1000 sheeps with 2 other families. They produce mostly cheese and meat from their animal and actually, except fried bread, they don't eat other food. So when we offered an orange, they made big eyes !



When we met the oncle of our kazakh guide, we had a strong impression to be in Central Asia !

And always a lot of kids !

The kazakh people live in bigger ger than mongolian people. This family had a pretty dreamy place

...and inside, we could see the traditional kazakh embroideries. The bed was specially amazing.

Some rocks on the top of the mountain

On the top of mountains, or hill, you can often see "Ovoo", a mix of shamanism and buddhism traditions. When you visit the ovoo, you have to throw stones on it while turning around three times, in the clockwise.

Kazakh New Year

Last saturday, on 22nd of March, it was the Kazakh New Year. As there are many kazakh in the region, specially in the north, we could enjoy the party !
Kozy and me joined some peacecorps (american volontiers) to go to Khovd Sum, 40 mn by car (12 people in a Jeep...) on a ghostly track.
Then, we were invited by 4 families, one after one, to share their meal. A good occasion to eat local food...which is a little bit better (it seems) than the mongol food. Of course, the big meat plate is in the center and actually...it was quite good !
Here's the family, Kozy and all the peacecorps.

It was also occasion to see wrestling competition, a bit outside of the village.

The wrestler who just win will imitate the eagle flying and the looser have to go under his arms.