World Nomad Games 2016: reviews

[steven]

I am interested in reading different opinions of visitors to the world nomad games. If you have been, please let us know your thoughts on the event!

[Backpacker Bart]

I'll be going as an official photographer, will let you know about it!

[Scribetrotter]

I attended the opening ceremonies and the world nomad village event - and I was blown away. On the technical and artistic side, everything went off without a hitch - at least to the naked eye. The events themselves were fun, fascinating actually. It's an absolute YES as far as I'm concerned. I hear the next ones will be in Turkey... not quite sure how that will translate but this was a once in a lifetime event.

[culebro]

In general it was quite interesting and worth to see it, especially the opening which was quite impressive. The sports were also very interesting and the free entrance made it posible to enjoy many of the events and to see more people.
On the other hand organization was not the best... the schedules were published extremely late, with confusing dates, lack of information given to the volunteers, problems to get into the opening with the electronic ticket, and very chaotic situation in Kyrchyn.
Anyway, very positive experience and I hope they can develop the event in the next editions.

[Aleco]

Was really cool. Been there the last 2 days, including the closing ceremony. And both areas, khyrchin and hippodrome .

[vanivan]

Few weeks late to the party, but I went intending to stay for 2 days and ended up sticking around for nearly all of it!

Despite the city hosting for the second time, it looked like they still had some teething pains. The free shuttle to and from Kyrchyn was perplexing -- either it would run at odd intervals, not run at all, or you'd see four buses parked with each driver pointing to another saying that was the one running (none of them did, until people complained for an hour). Volunteers didn't seem to know where some of the events were, and there was practically no signage, which led to me missing some sports. On the other hand, I stumbled upon some sports happening that weren't even on the schedule, in locations not broadcast.

What I did see was superb though! It's pretty hard to catch one match of kok-boru, yet I got to watch four, ranging from blowouts to close matches. The culture village was very cool as well, as was the beautiful setting. I'd be disappointed if the Games actually do move to Turkey -- which is only just a rumour at this point.

I've posted a blog entry with a bunch of photos and a bit on each sport I was able to watch.

[steven]

Thanks vanivan, that's exactly how I imagined it: great fun, a bit chaotic.

[wombat]

Only caught the last two days. Frustrating schedule changes didn't help, but the overall experience was good. The volunteers were easy to find and did their best. Ticketing for the closing ceremony was terrible (as was access...) and the ceremony was too much local pop music, not enough of anything else for me.
But the events and the atmosphere were great.I'd go again. Would have like to have seen some hunting events, but, well, that's another story.