After spending the morning and early afternoon watching the National Horse Games at Song Kol, the second largest lake in Kyrgyzstan, we made for the first biggest, Issyk Kol. I wasn’t sure how much bigger to expect this to make Issyk Kol, but it transpired that it was pretty huge. It was an impressive enough distance across to the Northern shore of the lake whilst travelling along the Southern shore that at first it appeared to be a sea – the water simply stretched on out to the horizon. The only giveaway that it was not an ocean was the mountains rising above the water beyond the horizon, letting us know that there was in fact land within twenty miles or so, and reminding us that Kyrgyzstan is achingly beautiful throughout. You don’t feel like it’s a bad old life when you wind up camping beside that kind of view – even if there is a menacing column of mosquitoes hovering above your head, enough of them that they were clearly audible from about ten foot away.
We struck for Bokonbaev, a small township about two thirds of the way along the southern shore of Issyk Kol, and the next destination for us with a CBT office, from which we organised to go and watch Eagle Hunting.
No, not people hunting eagles, before you gasp and clap your hand over your mouth in melodramatic horror.
The Eagle Hunter preparing to demonstrate how he hunts with the bird.
Another age old occupation for Kyrgyz men is Eagle Hunting. They train Golden Eagles and various breeds of hawk to hunt, and with the aid of these magnificent creatures, hunt for small game such as rabbits, but more impressively wolves. If I had thought about it before I saw a Golden Eagle hunting, I would have presumed a full grown wolf would stand a pretty reasonable chance against a bird, even a larger bird of prey like an eagle. They really do not.
The huntsmen arrived in a ratty old Audi, bold as brass with the passenger simply sitting in the car with a hooded Golden Eagle sitting on his arm. As you do. They led us perhaps 5km into the hilly, desert region to the south of Bokonbaev, and introduced us to the birds; the eagle was two years old, and had been used to hunt wolves several times already, though not being a full grown bird the first few times it was not capable of completely killing a full grown wolf, so the huntsman had been forced to aid the bird by using his knife to finish the animal off.
….. As you do.
The smaller, much more vocal hawk was three months old and still in the early stages of training, not as quick of reflex or confident as it would be when full grown; and the reason it was so much more vocal, they explained, was because it thought the huntsman who owned it was its mother, the source of food and protection and life lessons!
We were encouraged to hold both the eagle and the hawk, and I have to say that having a Golden Eagle sitting on your wrist, then slowly turning its head to stare at you is one of the more unsettling experiences I have ever had – even with the bird hooded! It was extremely imposing having it… stare me down, past that long, sharp, incredibly powerful beak.
In flight, the Golden Eagle hunting is truly something to behold. Swift and precise despite its massive wingspan, it was remarkably difficult to track properly with my telephoto lens. Released from a hundred or more meters up a nearby hillside, the first flight was for it to hunt a fox hide, which was being dragged along the ground by a young man being trained as a Huntsman. Pretty bloody brave to volunteer to flee from a monstrous eagle being trained to hunt fleeing things if you ask me – sod that for a lark.
Next was a rabbit, released just prior to the eagle being released. This was the real show of the brutal, irresistible power of the beak and talons these birds have. No part of me wants to experience what they are capable of after watching the wrenching and rending from such a ruthless hooked beak.
All the better for reducing you to easily digestible strips of meat, my dear…
The hawk was not quite such a spectacle in my opinion, as it was young and still being taught how to hunt, which involved swinging a small bird on a string around – but whipping it just that little bit faster when the hawk made a pass at it to sharpen its reflexes. Still, the speed of the bird was impressive, and again, made it very difficult to follow with the long lens 100% accurately.
Once both birds had hunted and had eaten – the hawk rather more than the eagle, apparently the eagle will eat once every three or four days, but the hawk must have fresh meat every day – we paid the huntsmen and they pretty much just scrammed, leaving us to find our own way back out of the maze of dirt tracks we had got to the hunting ground via.
We headed East along the Southern shore of Issyk Kol, out past Skazka Canyon we had been told of, known as Fairytale Canyon, where remarkable colour patterns have formed on the rock faces and further shapes have been formed by the wind and sand. I was not expecting much, but it turned out to be a lovely place to stop and spend a couple of hours, sitting amongst the multicoloured escarpments.
We were originally intending to stay in a yurt again that evening, and as it was on the way through we simply decided to turn up and find out if there was room for us to stay as we passed through to the Fairytale Canyon. It transpired that they had more than forty people staying there that evening however, so we returned to Bokonbaev and headed for our second choice – a guesthouse run by the CBT office. This turned out to be an excellent backup option, with comfortable beds, wifi, great local food cooked for us morning and evening, and very friendly and helpful hosts.
We in fact wound up making the decision to stay an extra night there. This gave us an extra day to simply relax as we were very aware that we were due to begin shift-driving through the days and nights to get us through the 5000km to Moscow – to enable us to have more than a single day to spare either in Moscow or in St. Petersburg, but not both.
Three Unwise Men 