Friends from around the globe converge each year on a camp in the remote grasslands of Mongolia for a week of exotic adventure and revelry that culminates in a polo tournament. We explore inside the Mutton Cup
It’s a little past 10pm in the Orkhon Valley of central Mongolia last summer, barely an hour since the sun turned the clouds pink and orange as it began to slip behind distant mountains. Now the scenery is hardly discernible, the air still, and all would be silent if it were not for the incongruous thumping of bass, beats and… Beyoncé. Drunk in Love blares from one of the gers huddled at the foot of a grassy hill. Used by day as the tack ger, its felt walls, usually lined with saddles, reins and riding helmets, tonight enclose perhaps the most eclectic party in the country.
Investors, entrepreneurs, fashion buyers and hoteliers lock arms in jiving embrace with nomadic herders, shamanic healers and artisans, the former clad in garishly coloured polo shirts, the latter in jewel-hued dels, traditional Mongolian jackets belted stylishly at the hips. The gamey scent of goat every evening and rounded up again by herdsmen on motorbikes at dawn.
We’ve picnicked on a mountain strewn with precariously stacked boulders, and we’ve kayaked down the Orkhon River past herds of horses and running yaks, their skunk-like tails swooshing in the wind. Waking from our ritualistic post-lunch siesta, we’ve been greeted by goats and kids grazing, literally, at our doorstep.