Dead Goat Polo

  Song-Kul Lake, Kyrgyzstan
Saturday, July 22, 2006

Yipee! A respite from bushcamping and mosquitos! We've been staying in yurts for a couple of nights, with some nomads up in the mountains by a large, clear lake at 3016m above sea level.

Reflections at sunset

A large proportion of Kyrgyz people are still semi-nomadic, living with their livestock (mainly horses, goats, sheep and cows) in yurts in the jailoo (the higher pastures in the mountains) during much of the year and returning to rented houses in towns during the winter. Where we are staying there are family groups living in little groups of 2 or 3 yurts dotted about all over the wide open hills. We're staying with an enterprising local family who've added four extra yurts for the benefit of tourists like us.

The yurt we stayed in

The highlight of our stay up here: witnessing a game of Buzkashi, a polo-like game played on horseback with a goat carcass (any vegetarians or v.squimish people may want to look away from the screen now!). After dispatching the goat and removing the head and hooves the aim of the game is to be the team who manages to drop it in the 'goal', a blanket laid out on the ground. All the games we saw were played with teams of either 2 on 2 or 3 on 3 with a referee (who didn't have much of a role other than to watch the goal as anything is fair game away from it!). The game starts with the goat on the ground a couple of hundred meters from the goal and involves a lot of wrestling, blocking and galloping (there are no boundaries and the games galloped straight through the watching crowd!). The winners get the goat which they take as a gift to a nearby yurt and receive a gift in return.

Goat Polo 5

We also went horseriding around the lake - although I'm sure our Kyrgyz hosts, who all appear to be born on horseback, were shocked (or amused) by our equine inexperience!

Local kids

One other yurt-related fact for you: the circular image in the middle of Kyrgyzstan's flag is a tyndyk, a wheel with two three-ply struts, which supports the roof and forms a hole in the middle of the top of the yurt to allow smoke to escape (it can be covered to keep the heat in at night, which is v.necessary as we discovered).