Silver Reeds 2016 winter festival in Khovd province

“Silver Reeds-2016” winter festival was successfully held in Khar-Us Lake, the bottom of Khan Jargalant mountain of Khovd on Feb 21-22, 2016 for its 6th year under slogan of "Let's protect Mother Earth". The festival was originally initiated by the WWF and organized with the locals to develop local tourism, to promote ice games and to recover old traditions. 17 soums of Khovd aimag were attended to the festival and performed their rich of cultural heritage which consisted of traditions of many nations. In the frame of the festival, numbers of competitions such as a marathon, ice shooting, dance and camel race were held and ice creations, best couple on camelback, best traditional costumes competitions were attracted. Moreover, aimag champion of skating marathon on the lake and and other ice games were organized and the most successful soums were selected by their scores of team competitions during the festival days. The festival organizers offered many interesting side activities to the guests including horse-sled, photography exhibition, skiing and camel ride. Khovd aimag is located in west of the country, 1580km from Ulaanbaatar . It has an immerse area that Mongolian Altai Mountains, great lakes depression and 20% of the aimag territory is Gobi.  Khovd is distinguished by its multi-cultural population and the aimag is home of more than 17 nationalities and ethnicities. Each of these groups has its own distinct traditional dwelling and settlement pattern, traditional costume and other cultural distinctions, literary, artistic, and musical traditions.

Domestic and international tourism and sports hunting have always been a sizable industry of Khovd province with natural beauty such as fresh and saltwater lakes, snow-capped mountains, green valleys and caves as well as ancient rock paintings and fortresses being the main sightseeing attractions.