Horse Games

So two weekends ago, Mike, Andy, Nicola and I went back to Bokonbaevo, the village near Lake Issyk-Kul where we went to the Eagle Festival. Our friend Josh tried to order a cab to pick us up after classes ended Friday night, but he couldn't get through to his cab driver, so I asked one woman in our office to call for us. When we went to the eagle festival we'd paid 2600 som to get to Bokonbaevo. This time though, it was 4000 som, and we were told this was "normal". We had no choice since it was last minute and we didn't think we could get a taxi any other way, so we agreed to it. Our driver didn't know how to get there (didn't even know if he was going to the northern coast of the lake or the southern) and had to ask for directions 4 times on the way. He had a tv screen built into the dash where the cigarette lighter usually is, and watched Disney movies the whole way there- I'm surprised we didn't die. He didn't even have good movies- Brother Bear, Pocahontas, Pocahontas 2, Mulan, and Mulan 2, all dubbed into Russian. The songs were dubbed into Russian, but rather than being sung, they were read out by a man with a deep monotone voice. But he did manage to get us to our homestay safely at 1:30 in the morning.
Our homestay hostess spoke German and no English, so I got to be the token spokesperson all weekend since none of us speak very good Russian. We met up with Loh, the Singaporean couch surfer who'd stayed with me in Bishkek the week before.
In the morning we got a cab up to the horse games. We drove for an hour on a dirt road into the mountains. We stopped about halfway up to let the engine get used to the height change, and some Kyrgyz men in an orange Moskvitch stopped too. We had our picture taken with them. It was a beautiful car and I should have asked them how much it cost!
We met up with some other friends we have from Bishkek when we got there, and also ran into an American guy who we met at the eagle festival who is self-publishing a photo book of Kyrgyzstan. There were about 8 yurts set up near a little mountain village, and speakers and a microphone. There was a big field where the games would take place. We got there in time for the Manaschi competition. Manas, the epic poem of Kyrgyzstan about the adventures of a man named Manas, is learned by heart and sung/chanted by men who are called Manaschi. There was a contest to see who performed the best. It is the most amazing music to listen to. I'm trying to get my videos on facebook, because it's impossible to describe the intensity of it. I have no sound here in the internet cafe so I can't say which is best, but check out these videos on youtube....
There were kiss-the-girl races, where a man and a woman race off on horseback, and the man has to catch up to the girl and kiss her. If he does before the finish line, he wins, if he doesn't, they race again and she gets to whip him the whole time.
We dressed for really cold weather, but it was sunny and quite warm for most of the day. We ate lunch in a yurt, and it was wonderful to eat plov and drink tea while sitting on the floor of a yurt, looking out of the roof opening and feeling the warm stove.
There was Kyrgyz wrestling, where men take their shirts off and wrestle on horseback. The goal is to get the guy to fall off of his horse. It's crazy how long they can stay on horseback!
It was fun just to sit around and peoplewatch too. There were majority Kyrgyz people here, but there were also quite a lot of foreigners- teachers, tourists, NGO workers, Peace Corps volunteers, and Germans doing their civil service year.
Once the sun went down behind the peaks around 4 o'clock, it got cold really quickly. We wandered around and played in the little snow piles there were scattered about, and then found our taxi driver and headed back down the mountain to Bokonbaevo. Our friends were staying in a yurt right at the festival, but we had already booked a homestay in Bokonbaevo and arranged round-trip taxi service, so we couldn't have stayed even though it would have been nice. But sleeping in a yurt in late October is very cold, so we'll wait and arrange a yurtstay in the spring sometime.
We went back to our homestay and walked into "downtown" Bokonbaevo for dinner. We found an open restaurant with heat and food, but they didn't have most of the things listed on the menu, and the food we got served was cold. It was called Goulash, but there was nothing resembling goulash at all. It was pasta, buckwheat, and rice covered with ketchup and some meat and gravy that wasn't mildly red-colored or spiced. It was an interesting experience. Back in our homestay, power came back on, so Mike, Andy, Nicola and Loh played card games and chess, and I knit the scarf I just recently finished for Mike. Now that people know that I can knit, I have a waiting list already 5 people long for requests- scarves, mittens, hats... I'm currently working on a pair of mittens for myself (pig-shaped!!), but when I finish I'll gladly make things for my friends, especially if they buy the yarn :) It's good to feel wanted/needed.
I have to go teach, so Day 2 of the horse games will come later. We had our first real snow last night and Bishkek is white! It's amazing and beautiful and I love the start of winter. Everything smells fresh and crisp and so much like Europe.