What's Up? Camel...

Yep, it's a camel. Yep, it stinks.

Nauryz is a big holiday around here. It's the holiday of the Spring new year, and it goes back to ancient, pre-Islamic times. It's a big holiday in many countries in the region.
It's also a big holiday for Peace Corps volunteers in Kazakhstan. They all flock to Shymkent (near me) in the south for the holiday weekend. We've already thawed out down here, while there's still some snow left up north. Among other things, we took a trip down the road to a couple historic sites and also went to the local hippodrome to watch traditional horseback games.

The ruins of Otrar, which was an ancient silk road city. It ended up looking like this because some wise guy (must have been a neo-con) thought it was a good idea to execute two emissaries from Ghengiz Khan.

There are only 15 or so million people in this country for a reason. When you go west from Shymkent, this is what the landscape looks like. Sheep, crooked trees, and rusty road signs. The white stuff in the foreground is salt. At a mosque near Otrar, they had a well whose water supposedly has healing properties. Took a sip, tasted like the Dead Sea.

Turkestan. This is a mosque and mausoleum to Ahmed Yasawi, who was a famous philosopher. It was first built by Amir Temir (Tamerlane) with the help of artisans captured during wars. It's a UNESCO heritage site and a local place of pilgrimmage. If you go three times, it's supposed to be equivilant to making the Hajj to Mecca. Guess who's been three times?

The camels are there for the tourists, though on the way there you do see herds of them grazing out in the open.


Hippodrome
Saturday was the Turkestan trip and Sunday was the trip out to the hippodrome to watch every game you could think of involving a horse. These include horse races, wrestling while on horseback, a boy chases girl race (if he catches her he gets a kiss), a girl chases boy race (if she catches him she gets a voucher for one day free from house work (really she just whips him)), and the finale: Kokpar.

Wrestling while on horseback. In my humble opinion, it would be a helluva lot faster if they got off the horses and then wrestled. But after five minutes of tugging and the horses being dizzy from spinning in circles, someone (usually) wins.

More wrestling

The Kokpar horses, happy to be waiting in the rain.

The Kokpar players, happy to be waiting in the rain.

Horse races

Kokpar

So kokpar is played between two teams on horseback. The object is to get a goat carcass into a goal on the other team's end of the field. The lucky goat has its head chopped off, then the carcass is sewn up and dipped in some stuff which maybe keeps it from tearing apart. This sport is played around Central Asia under different names. In Afghanistan, I think it's called Buz Kashi, or something like that. Maybe this is what the Kaz synchronized swimming team was emulating during the Olympics.

The guy with the carcass puts his whip in his teeth and his leg over the goat with one hand holding it.

This is the goal at one end of the field. It's basically a big mud bowl. The two guys in the middle are each pulling on a leg. The guy in red is an official. I'm not sure what rules there are to enforce, but they give him a whistle.

It was raining and this horse slipped in the mud, but the rider held onto the goat until the horse got up.

The highlight was this Slam Dunk. The guy in white had a fast break, jumped his horse up onto the goal, dropped the goat in, and jumped off. Unsuccessfully tried to get his autograph. Couldn't get through the mob of screaming cheerleaders. Maybe next year.