The Diarrhoea Diaries
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Kyrgyzstan: Kyrgyz Horse Games Festival
'It's kind of like Polo, only instead of a ball, they use the carcass of a goat!' - I had to see the Kyrgyz game of Ulak-Tartysh for myself, even if it meant an 8-hour drive and a 2,800m rise in elevation to do so!
Julien (the Frenchman), Meshi (the Hungarian) and I left Bishkek for Osh, some ten hours to the south, at the end of July. The road is spectacular, winding over two high, snowy passes before descending into a wide treeless valley filled with yurts. It skirts the shores of a massive reservoir before snaking its way through the red-cliffed gorge that rises above the brilliantly green waters of the dammed river below. Finally, it crosses the dusty, mountain-rimmed plains of the Fergana Valley, passing roadside stalls selling whole melons for 20c, brushing the border of Uzbekistan and ending in Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city, the market town of Osh.
Sounds nice, doesn't it? Well, it was for the most part! Our shared-taxi driver was seventy-two years old. His serious vision problems became evident early on, as he seemed most comfortable driving with his face as close to the windscreen as possible with his eyes squinted to mere slits. Despite an apparent fifty years of driving experience, the effectiveness of changing gears on steep or winding roads seemed to have escaped his attention, preferring instead to utilise the brake at every possible moment. If you'd like to know how many near-death experiences one can feasibly have during a ten-hour drive, I can give you the answer: Roughly one per hour! Imagine the scariest rollercoaster you've ever been on, add the very real possibility of death at every turn, and you get some idea of what we went through for the entire ten-hour journey! That's our driver in the picture on the left...
After checking into the Osh Guesthouse, one of Central Asia's few well-known backpacker hostels, we met up with Aussies Mark and Robyn and their new Swiss friend Sybill to make final arrangements for our trip to the Kyrgyz Horsegames Festival. We did this with the aid of Talant at CBT (Community-Based Tourism - a country-wide initiative to pump tourist dollars directly into the local community). The unfortunate thing about CBT is that instead of offering services at prices that are representative of the local economy, they try to take advantage of tourists and charge far more than what could be considered 'reasonable. For example, the originally stated prices for meals at the festival was 5 Euros for breakfast and 8 Euros for dinner! When you consider what you are getting - usually soup with noodles and a few bony chunks of mutton - this price would be outrageous even in Europe! Talant, unlike his supereriors, understands that the main tourism market in Central Asia is the backpacker market and that backpackers will simply look for a cheaper option. He has a big job ahead of him to try and convince his bosses that lower prices equals more backpacker business, but in the meantime he was able to pull some strings and get us a sweeter deal.
We narrowly managed to avoid sharing our marshrutka with the incessantly-complaining Dixie, the wife of an American NGO worker, who had helped organise the excursion. Dixie was hell bent on educating Kyrgyzstan that littering is bad for the environment. She could be found later at the festival, wandering around picking up litter while Kyrgyz festival-goers looked on in confusion.
The road from Osh to Sary Tash is one of the worst I've been on in Asia. The Chinese are rebuilding this road (as they are the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan, the Dushanbe-Kokand road in northern Tajikistan, and apparently half the roads in Africa) in what initially seems like a strategic move to increase speed and efficiency on trade routes, but which, given more thought, appears more like part of a greater plan for world domination! The road is a mess of construction, meaning the 160km journey takes about four-and-a-half hours!
The tiny town of Sary Tash sits more than 3000m above sea level. It's a grim, cold place to be - it's one saving grace being that it offers the first views of the spectacular Pamir mountain range (the world's fourth highest) which marks the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Pik Lenin (inexplicably not renamed after independence like its counterpart 'Peak Communism'!) is one of the peaks in this range, rising to a height of 7134m. It's the most popular 7000m+ peak to climb in the world and is also the home to the worst ever mountaineering disaster, where 43 climbers were killed after an avalanche took out a base camp.
The location for the festival couldn't have been more beautiful, and it may have even overshadowed the festival itself. Nestled in a valley littered with yurts and tents and surrounded by lofty glacial peaks, you could easily get lost in the views and forget about the chilly temperature.
We were shown to a cosy yurt which would act as our dining room and (after thick mattresses and blankets were laid out) also our sleeping quarters.
Having arrived late in the evening, we didn't get to explore the site until morning. I was up at the break of dawn wandering around the festival ground, meeting friendly locals, watching with interest the construction of a yurt and, of course, taking far too many photos in the early morning light!
It took a long time for the games to actually begin. We were made to endure act after act of Kyrgyz performers, ranging from average-at-best to downright cringe-worthy!
By the time the games began, the altitude had taken an effect on most of us. Lethargy, shortness of breath and extreme tiredness got in the way of my enjoyment of the games themselves (Poor Robyn had diarrhoea and vomiting to boot!). All I wanted to do was sleep, but I joined the hordes of traditionally-dressed locals and surpriingly large amount of foreign backpackers to watch the games when they finally began.
Julien (the Frenchman), Meshi (the Hungarian) and I left Bishkek for Osh, some ten hours to the south, at the end of July. The road is spectacular, winding over two high, snowy passes before descending into a wide treeless valley filled with yurts. It skirts the shores of a massive reservoir before snaking its way through the red-cliffed gorge that rises above the brilliantly green waters of the dammed river below. Finally, it crosses the dusty, mountain-rimmed plains of the Fergana Valley, passing roadside stalls selling whole melons for 20c, brushing the border of Uzbekistan and ending in Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city, the market town of Osh.
Sounds nice, doesn't it? Well, it was for the most part! Our shared-taxi driver was seventy-two years old. His serious vision problems became evident early on, as he seemed most comfortable driving with his face as close to the windscreen as possible with his eyes squinted to mere slits. Despite an apparent fifty years of driving experience, the effectiveness of changing gears on steep or winding roads seemed to have escaped his attention, preferring instead to utilise the brake at every possible moment. If you'd like to know how many near-death experiences one can feasibly have during a ten-hour drive, I can give you the answer: Roughly one per hour! Imagine the scariest rollercoaster you've ever been on, add the very real possibility of death at every turn, and you get some idea of what we went through for the entire ten-hour journey! That's our driver in the picture on the left...
After checking into the Osh Guesthouse, one of Central Asia's few well-known backpacker hostels, we met up with Aussies Mark and Robyn and their new Swiss friend Sybill to make final arrangements for our trip to the Kyrgyz Horsegames Festival. We did this with the aid of Talant at CBT (Community-Based Tourism - a country-wide initiative to pump tourist dollars directly into the local community). The unfortunate thing about CBT is that instead of offering services at prices that are representative of the local economy, they try to take advantage of tourists and charge far more than what could be considered 'reasonable. For example, the originally stated prices for meals at the festival was 5 Euros for breakfast and 8 Euros for dinner! When you consider what you are getting - usually soup with noodles and a few bony chunks of mutton - this price would be outrageous even in Europe! Talant, unlike his supereriors, understands that the main tourism market in Central Asia is the backpacker market and that backpackers will simply look for a cheaper option. He has a big job ahead of him to try and convince his bosses that lower prices equals more backpacker business, but in the meantime he was able to pull some strings and get us a sweeter deal.We narrowly managed to avoid sharing our marshrutka with the incessantly-complaining Dixie, the wife of an American NGO worker, who had helped organise the excursion. Dixie was hell bent on educating Kyrgyzstan that littering is bad for the environment. She could be found later at the festival, wandering around picking up litter while Kyrgyz festival-goers looked on in confusion.
The road from Osh to Sary Tash is one of the worst I've been on in Asia. The Chinese are rebuilding this road (as they are the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan, the Dushanbe-Kokand road in northern Tajikistan, and apparently half the roads in Africa) in what initially seems like a strategic move to increase speed and efficiency on trade routes, but which, given more thought, appears more like part of a greater plan for world domination! The road is a mess of construction, meaning the 160km journey takes about four-and-a-half hours!
The tiny town of Sary Tash sits more than 3000m above sea level. It's a grim, cold place to be - it's one saving grace being that it offers the first views of the spectacular Pamir mountain range (the world's fourth highest) which marks the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Pik Lenin (inexplicably not renamed after independence like its counterpart 'Peak Communism'!) is one of the peaks in this range, rising to a height of 7134m. It's the most popular 7000m+ peak to climb in the world and is also the home to the worst ever mountaineering disaster, where 43 climbers were killed after an avalanche took out a base camp.
The location for the festival couldn't have been more beautiful, and it may have even overshadowed the festival itself. Nestled in a valley littered with yurts and tents and surrounded by lofty glacial peaks, you could easily get lost in the views and forget about the chilly temperature.
We were shown to a cosy yurt which would act as our dining room and (after thick mattresses and blankets were laid out) also our sleeping quarters.
Having arrived late in the evening, we didn't get to explore the site until morning. I was up at the break of dawn wandering around the festival ground, meeting friendly locals, watching with interest the construction of a yurt and, of course, taking far too many photos in the early morning light!
It took a long time for the games to actually begin. We were made to endure act after act of Kyrgyz performers, ranging from average-at-best to downright cringe-worthy!
By the time the games began, the altitude had taken an effect on most of us. Lethargy, shortness of breath and extreme tiredness got in the way of my enjoyment of the games themselves (Poor Robyn had diarrhoea and vomiting to boot!). All I wanted to do was sleep, but I joined the hordes of traditionally-dressed locals and surpriingly large amount of foreign backpackers to watch the games when they finally began.
Horses play a big part in the Kyrgyz way of life. In rural parts of the country young boys are skilled horsemen by the age of five, so it's not surprising that so many games here incorporate these beasts.
The first game was Tyiyn-Enmei, where riders had to gallop across the field and pick up a coin from the ground with their right hand. How they did this without falling under the horse and being trampled is beyond me!
The second game, Kyz-Kuumai, was a horseback game of the old playground favourite, Kiss-catch. Women on a fast horse were given a slight head start and then pursued by a man riding a slower horse whose goal was to catch her and kiss her. After a few rounds of this, the roles were reversed and the girls had the their chance to kiss the boys.
After an overly-long break in the games to play out several wrestling matches (a passion of Central Asians), the third and final game of the first day was played. Er-Enish was basically just more wrestling... only, unsurprisingly, on horseback! The object of the game is to wrestle your opponent off his horse.
I ran into Nathan (a young motorcyclist from Nottingham whom I'd hung out with in Bishkek) and his lovely new Russian girlfriend at the festival (The Central Asian backpacking community is small by comparison with many destinations, so running into the same person twice, or even three times, is fairly common). After another greasy noodle and mutton soup for dinner, Meshi, Julien, Talant and I joined Nathan and Eva and their travel buddies for some high-altitude vodka drinking. It seemed like a good idea at the time....
I'd anticipated the path to inebriation being a quick one, given our 3,600m elevation. What I hadn't counted on however, was just how nasty a high-altitude hangover would be! I suffered through the next day, forcing myself to take a walk up the valley, then barely leaving the doorway of the yurt for the rest of the morning.
There was little reason to leave the yurt that morning anyway. The only game that was played was a 15km horserace. The playing field for the previous day's games was the start and finish line - the other 14.8km were not in view! The winning horse won with a two-minute lead! Most horses looked to be on the verge of death when they stumbled across the finish line, having been whipped and kicked repeatedly for a full 15 kilometres! Brutal!
The drive back to Osh that afternoon was laborious to say the least, with obligatory flat tyres and breakdowns en-route. Admittedly, the location and the people I encountered at the festival far outweighed the games themselves.... and I never got to see the dead-goat polo! This was played on the second morning, away from the main games area, and with little fanfare! Boo!
Mark, Robyn and Julien took off the next day while Meshi, Sybill and I went for dinner and drinks with the crew from the vodka-swilling night at the festival. This was to be quite the eventful night, in a very violent, very ugly way!
Nathan and Eva had been traveling with Brit couple Ollie and Jenny (who were driving from England to Delhi in what can only be described as a tank!), Ollie's motorcyclist mate Russ and fellow motorcyclist, Herb, an unusually patriotic Swiss fellow.
Nathan seemed quite insecure about his relationship with Eva, and on this particular night this insecurity manifested itself as Nathan refusing to shut up about how much he disliked the unflattering dress that Eva was wearing, and how she usually looked much better than she did that night. He wasn't just saying this to all of us, he was even saying it directly to Eva.
Somewhere into the second bottle of vodka, Ollie had had enough and decided to tell Nathan, in no uncertain terms, that he couldn't stand him. Nathan took this badly, Ollie continued to call him a cock. I tried to calm things down and thought I had succeeded - they'd stopped bickering at least. Then, while chatting with Ollie across the table, I saw Nathan come up from behind, wielding one of the heavy glass beermugs we'd been drinking from, which he belted, with force, into the side of Ollie's head! Ollie never saw it coming and never had a chance to defend himself. He must've been instantly concussed, because he simply sat there without reaction. This allowed Nathan to wind up for shot number two, which he delivered with the same force as the first blow, this one splitting open Ollie's forehead, sending blood pissing everywhere. For a look at Ollie's injuries following the attack, check out the photo at the very bottom of his blogsite page: http://www.jollyfollies.com/Diary/057_mountain_madness_part_2.html
Scary stuff!
My reaction may have been quicker had I not just downed ten shots of vodka. I may have been able to stop the second blow. As it happened, when I saw Nathan going for a third shot, I leaped to my feet and blocked the blow with my forearm, causing two nice gashes and a lot of pain, but nothing compared to what a third blow of this force could've done to Ollie!
Nathan finally dropped the mug and made to leave. He was dropped to the floor with a single punch to the side of the head delivered by Russ as he walked by.
No one could believe what had happened. The Kyrgyz people in the bar were shocked. One of them took Ollie and Jenny to the hospital in a taxi where Ollie's head was stitched in two places. Nathan meanwhile was still playing the victim, mistakenly believing that I was on his side after what he'd just done! I've never witnessed a more brutal or cowardly attack in my life. Had I not intervened, I'm sure he would've just kept swinging. Had he no concept that he could have KILLED Ollie, that he could've given him permanent brain damage?
Epilogue: Ollie survived (I saw him and Jenny again randomly in northern Pakistan); Nathan and Ollie almost got in another fight back at their hotel; Eva stayed with Nathan (!!!; she hadn't been in the room to witness the attack for herself); Nathan was last seen in Bishkek full of remorse over what had happened.
Moral of the Story: The price of vodka in former Soviet states should be raised to avoid over-consumption and resulting violet outbursts!!
The first game was Tyiyn-Enmei, where riders had to gallop across the field and pick up a coin from the ground with their right hand. How they did this without falling under the horse and being trampled is beyond me!
The second game, Kyz-Kuumai, was a horseback game of the old playground favourite, Kiss-catch. Women on a fast horse were given a slight head start and then pursued by a man riding a slower horse whose goal was to catch her and kiss her. After a few rounds of this, the roles were reversed and the girls had the their chance to kiss the boys.
After an overly-long break in the games to play out several wrestling matches (a passion of Central Asians), the third and final game of the first day was played. Er-Enish was basically just more wrestling... only, unsurprisingly, on horseback! The object of the game is to wrestle your opponent off his horse.
I ran into Nathan (a young motorcyclist from Nottingham whom I'd hung out with in Bishkek) and his lovely new Russian girlfriend at the festival (The Central Asian backpacking community is small by comparison with many destinations, so running into the same person twice, or even three times, is fairly common). After another greasy noodle and mutton soup for dinner, Meshi, Julien, Talant and I joined Nathan and Eva and their travel buddies for some high-altitude vodka drinking. It seemed like a good idea at the time....I'd anticipated the path to inebriation being a quick one, given our 3,600m elevation. What I hadn't counted on however, was just how nasty a high-altitude hangover would be! I suffered through the next day, forcing myself to take a walk up the valley, then barely leaving the doorway of the yurt for the rest of the morning.
There was little reason to leave the yurt that morning anyway. The only game that was played was a 15km horserace. The playing field for the previous day's games was the start and finish line - the other 14.8km were not in view! The winning horse won with a two-minute lead! Most horses looked to be on the verge of death when they stumbled across the finish line, having been whipped and kicked repeatedly for a full 15 kilometres! Brutal!
The drive back to Osh that afternoon was laborious to say the least, with obligatory flat tyres and breakdowns en-route. Admittedly, the location and the people I encountered at the festival far outweighed the games themselves.... and I never got to see the dead-goat polo! This was played on the second morning, away from the main games area, and with little fanfare! Boo!Mark, Robyn and Julien took off the next day while Meshi, Sybill and I went for dinner and drinks with the crew from the vodka-swilling night at the festival. This was to be quite the eventful night, in a very violent, very ugly way!
Nathan and Eva had been traveling with Brit couple Ollie and Jenny (who were driving from England to Delhi in what can only be described as a tank!), Ollie's motorcyclist mate Russ and fellow motorcyclist, Herb, an unusually patriotic Swiss fellow.
Nathan seemed quite insecure about his relationship with Eva, and on this particular night this insecurity manifested itself as Nathan refusing to shut up about how much he disliked the unflattering dress that Eva was wearing, and how she usually looked much better than she did that night. He wasn't just saying this to all of us, he was even saying it directly to Eva.
Somewhere into the second bottle of vodka, Ollie had had enough and decided to tell Nathan, in no uncertain terms, that he couldn't stand him. Nathan took this badly, Ollie continued to call him a cock. I tried to calm things down and thought I had succeeded - they'd stopped bickering at least. Then, while chatting with Ollie across the table, I saw Nathan come up from behind, wielding one of the heavy glass beermugs we'd been drinking from, which he belted, with force, into the side of Ollie's head! Ollie never saw it coming and never had a chance to defend himself. He must've been instantly concussed, because he simply sat there without reaction. This allowed Nathan to wind up for shot number two, which he delivered with the same force as the first blow, this one splitting open Ollie's forehead, sending blood pissing everywhere. For a look at Ollie's injuries following the attack, check out the photo at the very bottom of his blogsite page: http://www.jollyfollies.com/Diary/057_mountain_madness_part_2.htmlScary stuff!
My reaction may have been quicker had I not just downed ten shots of vodka. I may have been able to stop the second blow. As it happened, when I saw Nathan going for a third shot, I leaped to my feet and blocked the blow with my forearm, causing two nice gashes and a lot of pain, but nothing compared to what a third blow of this force could've done to Ollie!
Nathan finally dropped the mug and made to leave. He was dropped to the floor with a single punch to the side of the head delivered by Russ as he walked by.
No one could believe what had happened. The Kyrgyz people in the bar were shocked. One of them took Ollie and Jenny to the hospital in a taxi where Ollie's head was stitched in two places. Nathan meanwhile was still playing the victim, mistakenly believing that I was on his side after what he'd just done! I've never witnessed a more brutal or cowardly attack in my life. Had I not intervened, I'm sure he would've just kept swinging. Had he no concept that he could have KILLED Ollie, that he could've given him permanent brain damage?
Epilogue: Ollie survived (I saw him and Jenny again randomly in northern Pakistan); Nathan and Ollie almost got in another fight back at their hotel; Eva stayed with Nathan (!!!; she hadn't been in the room to witness the attack for herself); Nathan was last seen in Bishkek full of remorse over what had happened.
Moral of the Story: The price of vodka in former Soviet states should be raised to avoid over-consumption and resulting violet outbursts!!
posted by Scott Robertson at 2:54 AM
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