Riding with Eagle Hunters
By Jamie Maddison
At fully gallop the world streams past as a blur of stone, sand and sky, stretching away from under my horse into the miles of empty steppe all around. The wind whips Kafka’s mane whipping around my stiff hands – numbed from the chill Mongolian air as I try to keep control of the racing animal, excited by our immanent return to camp. Suddenly – and with a deepening sense of dread – I watch as it stumbles on a rock throwing me forward, then backward; the horse rearing up in reaction to its own blunder. My feet leave the stirrups and I head legs-first towards the bare earth, rolling, dazed, in a thick cloud of dust and dried mud. The force of the fall carries me back onto my stumbling feet just in time to see the galloping horse disappearing in the distant, a retreating speck in an otherwise still and empty plain.
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‘This will be your horse Jamie,’ Alpamys – our guide – tells me, thrusting the old reins into my eager outstretched hands, ‘and this will one will be yours Matt; he has no name.”’
Admiring our beasts, decided to nickname him Kakfa, under the strong Mongolian sun whilst Alpamys begins to sort out the hardworking packhorse, which will be carrying our supplies for our 200 miles journey across the steppe. We had come to the Bayan-Olgii province of far Western Mongolia to train to meet and ride the fabled Kazakh eagle hunters of the area, who in a thousand year old uninterrupted tradition have hunted their quarry using hand reared Golden Eagles.
We also had come to ride, we want to explore te borders, borders fascinate me, that transition where one country stops and another culture begins is mental. Wherever we went we knew we needed the time on the horse, the practices in for a big grand plan we’d got to recreate the journey of an old Irish explorer 100 years to the day from when he first set off. So, through all the planning, the countless gChat sessions and the constant nag of trying to find some way of making a living in the middle of all this daydreaming stuff – we’d booked our flights, headed to Mongolia, travelled the 2000km off-road track right across the country and ended up right here, in a small dirt courtyard on the outskirts of the region’s capital Olgii.
‘Okay, okay, okay! Let’s go!’ shouts Aplamys, his smiling mongoloid features wrapped up heavily in a hat, scarf and trenchcoat; protection from approaching, bitter central Asian winter. At the age of 25, the young Kazakh has already done much better than for himself I, with a house, a wife and child, four horses and the esteemed title of a Long Rider, an accolade awarded by the Long Rider’s Guild to equestrian travellers who have completed a more than a thousand mile journey, something Matthew Traver had ambitions for ourself in just a few short months.
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Idealism over for the moment and on the horses at last, we finally head out into the steppe. The air is hazy, the sky blue and the ground dead all around part from the dried, discoloured grass, straw coloured to match a sandy ground. The landscape is huge, stretching away from miles in every direction as we slowly make our way up our hill, Olgii disappearing from view behind its crest. I haven’t been on a horse for years, Matt’s never sat on one, except for maybe once on as a beach attraction, and our inexperience must show through …
The journey across seems to take a hundred winter days. sky is almost black under glasses empty stone and earth etc. def change. Yak attack. Alpamys sings loudly to himself, matt films on his homemade boom mike made from a action camera mounted to a walking pole, and I try to take pictures between the rocking motion of my horse. lagging behind I dig my heels in and I’m galloping, the freest ever felt. The we stay in ger the first night , children playing, gers offer us cup after cup of salted tea minus mitka our dog, wa straw coloured dog who got lost in a straw coloured grass and Alpamys had already given up for dead. The Kzakh nomads welcome us to the ger, a goat is slaughtered and we digging hands into a big pile of meat, spend the night in the warmth, playing a dombra. Amazin sunset. Another night we spend in our floorless tent beneath the amazing sunrise, the temperature plummets and
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‘“Well I thought these saddles would be have much, much worse,’ I shout across from my plodding position at the back of the line.
‘What?’ shouts back Matt, who’d been recording Alpamys horseback singing, Behind us, small on the very edge of the horizon is the chains of mountains we had passed through two days before. We haven’t seen anyone, apart from a few distant gers, all day. In front the empty flat plain.
‘These saddles are great!’ I shout back hoarsely.
‘Yeah man.’ he says, reigning his horse in line with my own, ‘I was told we’d be red raw by this far in but it’s been three days and nothing! ‘cool, look at that, ‘he adds pointing ahead.
The view ahead is almost that of a Scottish winter setting, we’re halfway up over one of the mountain passes and ahead lies wind-scoured snow, engraved on a rounded hill going up and up. Kafka is sheened in sweat from the steep gradient, rivulets of sweat funning down his flanks, mixing with the dust, sweat to form a multitude of hard grey arrows heads at the end of each hair all along his body. We keep going, over the hill, and leading the horses down the other side on foot in the dying golden light, shadows sweeping up the hillside as the watercourse on the boggy ground quickly begin to freeze solid into blue-white channels, snaking away from us, one could almost imagine all the way to the small border town of Altai another’s day ride from us.
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The Golden Eagle soars skyward, leaving behind its owner and I, both standing forlornly on the cold and bleak mountain top; the empty steppe stretches away from me for miles in every direction, completely flat and featureless until the gentle curve of distant snow-capped mountains blockades the distant horizon from view. I watch its flight through my binoculars, its wings splayed beautifully against a crystal-blue sky. Suddenly, a shout echoes up from Alpamys far below; a rabbit is racing across the shattered rocks and the eagles are already bearing down fast on it, their dark shadows streaming across the ground as they close in mercilessly in on their quarry. With all of us looking through our lenses, we watch as the plucky rabbit darts to the side at the last minute, down a warren and permanently out of the grasp of its pursuer.
The hunters all recline on their horses at various points of the hill on top of the hill, majestically bedecked out in their traditional costumes with firey legs, topped with red fox-fur hats. They pose like models, each framed on the skyline at different point of the hill, Alpamys’ father, Dalaikhan (check) is at the highest of the three watching in kingly repose as son struggles to get his father’s eagle onto his unsheathed arm, the bird’s talon’s evidently causing our friends ome pain even at this distance. The other two trot onward the right hands more sympathetically padded and resting on supporting poles. The pace rises, and once on own our horses we suffer struggle to keep up on this ongoing pace round an entire chain of small mountains. Onward we go.
Disappointingly for the eagle hunters – but quite happily for myself – we see no further animals and eventually turn our way back to home. We return to our temporary accommodation in the border-town of Altai in a line: three eagles hunters ahead of us, their birds ruffling their feathers proudly in the dying light, the hunters proudly erect on their sweating horses and then us at the back, riding in our outsized and borrowed trench coats. The unlikely procession draws odd looks as we return to town.
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The horses are well rested and frisky, we’ve only been back in the steppe a day or two but their surging in energy is enormous and unwise to encourage, as I ponder as I gingerly prod my already swelling ankle from inside the slowly dissipating cloud of the dust cloud, all watch my horse disappear into the distance.
‘Are you okay?’ I hear from behind me as Matt approaches from behind, “’Where’s the camera, is it okay?!’ he adds lividly before I can spout out reply.
‘I hand him the drift innovation camera, feeling very stupid; the screen is covered in coloured lines; the casing scratched to pieces.
‘Great it doesn’t turn back on, it’s broken.’ No wait. This might be okay, God man you should have had this strapped somewhere’, he
‘Priorities man, I retort grumpily but we’re spared further a blazing row by the distracting sight of number of our hosts from the dstant ger, jump bareback onto their horses and round up my wayward ride, still cantering smugly around the plain to the river.
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The day after next, I nearly fall off my horse again. We’d pushed our rides as close to the Chinese border as we thought prudent, and the weather had turned bad. Sitting on a horse in conditions dropping to below -10, it felt like sitting atop a Scarfell Pike for days on end in a winter snowstorm. I‘ve come down with a fever and as we push the horses across a series deep flowing ice-laden rivers, I feel weakend, ready to just slide off the saddle sideways: like I need to be lashed to the pommel.
They take me to a ger, Alpamys doesn’t seem to know the women who are busy making string from sheepl’s wool using an old fashioned. Inside the circle tent, decorative hangings everywhere a fire in the middles, looked dwon on high from photographs of deceased relatives, I collapse on a blanket laid out next to the fire, and coats are piled on me from every direction. The night passes by, theirs quite a gathering of ten people an yhey dance and sing with Matt, who’s recording it all on his camera, thankfully fixed and in working order, whilst I shiver in, dark recluse.
Getting up in the darkness for air, I stumble outside, gulping down the burning cold air. it’s snowing lightly like Christmas day. quiet only the sound of my footprint, crunching in the newly laid snow and the rustling movement of our horse just a few yards away. The moon shines between the clouds, lighting up this magnificent world all around me. I drink everything, how lucky to be here, in this this resplendent world that runs right out from under our feet to what must be the very edge of the earth itself. We’d achieved what we’d set out to achieve, rode where we wanted to rod,e met and rode with eagles hunters and prepared ourself for the big expedition to come, hopefully make this better.