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“Kugyershin Family Songs”
It is late in the day. Dinner is finished. We gather in a ger (yurt) in Western Mongolia and admire the beautiful felted and embroidered tapestries as we listen to traditional Kazakh music from Mister Kugyershin and his daughter – both dressed in their best Kazakh clothing.
It is said that if you want to see traditional Kazakh culture, you should go to Bayan-Ölgii province in Mongolia, rather than to Kazakhstan.
In the 1800s, the expanding Russian Empire pushed the semi-nomadic Kazakh tribes into neighboring countries, including Mongolia – where members of the Middle Jüz Kazakhs or Central Hordes (Orta juz) settled in the western-most province of Bayan-Ölgii. Under Stalin’s regime, more Kazakhs fled communist-controlled Kazakhstan. A small number returned to Kazakhstan after the Soviet Union dissolved and democratised, but for most of the 20th century, this pocket high in the Altai Mountains, nestled along the borders of China and Russia, has remained an isolated, tightly knit community.
Mongolian is a second language here, when people speak it at all. The 90,000-or-so ethnic Kazakhs continue to practice their Muslim religion and to speak their own language. With only about 2 people on every square kilometre, they have room to roam on their rugged ponies with their goats and sheep in a pastoral-nomadic lifestyle, and to train their captured golden eagles to hunt for them.
An extended family of eagle-hunters had set up a small ger-camp for us on their vast property. Hospitality is legendary in nomadic households: they say that if you come to a Kazakh home unexpectedly, (as it is across all the Mongolian Steppes), you will be received as if you had been invited. Of course, as “outsiders”, the group of photo-enthusiasts I was traveling with under the eye of local guides G and Segi, were paying for our accommodation, and had brought suitable gifts for our hosts.
It is a stark, serenely beautiful place, but you have to be pretty rugged to thrive.
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Our Ger Camp
Our out-of-season gers were ready for us when we arrived in Bayan-Ölgii, Mongolia, after a bumpy six-day drive across half the county.
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Building a Camp
Gers, being portable, have no fixed facilities. Our organisers have brought in charcoal for our fires and still have to build us a toilet block.
The New Shower
It was a few days before we had a generator-operated hot shower hooked up – which we really appreciated when it actually worked.
Kazakh Homestead
After a morning of eagle-hunt training (see: Nurguli, Kazakh Eagle Huntress), we crossed the rocky plateau from our gers to the winter home of our Kazakh hosts: flat-roofed white-washed mud-brick rooms set behind fences built from the rocks and pebbles found in abundance all around. They might follow the herds with their ger camps in summer, but this is their permanent base.
Golden Eagle
The eagles the Kazakhs chose to train are usually female, because females are much larger and therefore able to manage heavier prey. They are only ever semi-tamed, so that they can be returned to the wild after about ten years, to fend for themselves and reproduce. Therefore, they might be part of the household, but they are not pets. When they are not working, they are hooded to keep them calm and tied up to keep them captive.
Three Kinds of Yogurt
Inside the house, we are welcomed with a hot mares’ milk drink and snacks. With herds of goats, sheep and horses, dairy products are a staple here. Those crispy-looking things in the centre of the table are dried yogurt; the spreads are thickened yogurt-based concoctions; and then there are slices of hard cheese … I can’t say I enjoyed any of it!
Sarkhad and his Hot Milk
Our host Sarkhad is the patriarch in this extended family complex. He has four sons, two of whom live here in the compound and hunt eagles with him, and two of whom are “in the city” pursuing other interests.
Sarkhad
As a Kazakh Muslim, Sarkhad keeps his head covered. At home, he wears a tobetai, an embroidered, felted skullcap. When we were out with him eagle hunting, he was wearing his magnificent malakai – a fox-fur hat with earflaps (see: Nurguli, Kazakh Eagle Huntress).
Hunters Coming Home
As we are drinking our milk, two of Sarkhad’s sons and his granddaughter – all of whom have been out with their eagles – return to the compound.
The Hunters are Home …
“Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
Of course, the Robert Louis Stevenson poem is a Requiem, while these hunters are full of life!
Golden Eagle Tethered at Home
The animals need to be tended before the returning hunters can have their lunch.
Kazakh Host
Using our guide as an interpreter, Sarkhad explains some of the aspects of eagle-capture and training …
Tressing the Eagle
… while his sons Jakslak …
Looking after the Animals
… and Razdak look after their eagles.
Kazakh Flat-Roofed House
We had a generator powering our bare-bulbs on wires and charging our batteries; the Kazakh home (and nomad gers typically) makes do with solar panels. The fox drying on the pole is from yesterday’s hunt.
Yagaanaa
Fortunately, we didn’t have to survive on horse-milk yogurt: we travelled in style, with our own wonderful chef, Yagaanaa. After another long day, when the meals were cleared away, she joined us in appreciating the local culture: …
“Kugyershin Family Songs”
… Kazakh songs, with accompaniment on traditional dombra, plucked lutes with two horsehair strings. Music and songs are a part of a strong tradition of oral history.
Night Skies
One of the advantages of using an outhouse in the middle of a cold late-Autumn night, is that you have a chance to appreciate the expansive Mongolian skies!
(ISO1600 18mm f/3.2 30sec – tripod + headlamp for “light painting)
Tender Dawn
On our last morning in the camp, I was up early. I had a sense of why the nomads love this wide, open land as I watched the sun rise over the Kazakh homestead in the distance.
Flying over the rugged landscape back to Ulaanbaater – a four hour flight that we had taken six days to drive – I could further appreciate how truly isolated these nomadic tribes are. No wonder their lifestyle has changed little over the centuries!
Until next time,
Happy Travels!
Pictures: 28September-03October2016
[…] Today, most Kazakhs in Western Mongolia maintain a traditional lifestyle, typically moving their animals – and their gers: their round tents – three or four times a year to find new grazing pastures in this high, cold, and windy landscape with rocky soil and minimal rainfall. Warmth and colour in what is otherwise a harsh environment comes from richly embroidered clothing, tapestries, and blankets, sewn together from the lush furs of the hunted winter fox, felted from combed out camel under-coat, or cut and stitched, using the soft skins of sheep slaughtered for food and pelts. Social evenings are spent in blanket-lined gers, around fires of wood and manure, drinking airag (fermented mare’s milk), arkhi (cow’s milk vodka), or straight vodka, and singing songs accompanied by a two-string dombra (see: At Home with the Kazakhs). […]