Eagle hunting festival

Before we went on a super long travel spree, we wanted to spend a weekend at the Blue Wolf Eagle festival just outside of Olgii, and to warm up to that, we spent 3 days in an eagle hunting family which Méliane described in the last post. 

The festival was an experience to behold. It was held over two days and celebrates a Kazakh activity that has been nearly lost in Kazakhstan  The hunting itself is done only in the winter by a team of 3 men and one bird. They generally hunt foxes, hares and marmot. Sometimes they hunt wolves but only in teams of multiple birds as to minimize the risk of inuring the eagle by the defense of the wolf. Even when they hunt fox, it has been known for an eagle to have a claw injured or bitten of. During the hunt, the 2 extra guys run in a valley to chase the prey into the open. Once there the hunter removes the hood from the eyes of the eagle, and it scans the valley, seeing the prey and takes off in attack. The hunter then follows in haste and usually makes the final kill, and rewards the eagle with some fresh meat. It the Kazakh areas, it was practiced to survive the winters, and is still practiced.

The festival itself was fascinating. The first event was eagle calling, where the hunter leaves the eagle on a mountain top, rides into the valley and calls the bird to him. It is impressive to see the birds flying so close to the crowd (sometimes directly over or through). The second event was a camel race. I had no idea that camels could run that fast. It was entertaining. The third event was the goat pull. This must be the most ridiculous sport I have ever seen. The sport is played between 2 guys on horse back, one of which picks up a headless goat from the ground (we saw the goat before it was headless, they introduced it to the crowd and participants during the opening ceremonies), He then gets a good grip and the other participant grabs ahold and the match begins. It is basically a tug of war with a goat corpse and high speeds. Pretty sweet. The first day of this was the elimination round.

 The second day started similarly to the first, with the eagle calling,, but this time the eagles had to capture "prey" which was a rabbit skin on a rope pulled on horseback. After that there was a race between a man and a woman on horseback. They would take off, each on their own horse, and the man would take the reigns of the woman's horse and she would whip him for about 2kms. Apparently there is no winner or loser of the race (the guys take a beating though) and is a tradition to transfer the women's power to the men. The third and final event was the final goat pull rounds. It got pretty heated, there were fights and screaming, police, the whole kit. In my opinion it is like Kazakh hockey. Super entertaining. 

  

C'est durant ce week end qu'on a rencontré le plus de touristes jusqu'a maintenant! Certains venus spécialement pour l'occasion. Mais surtout 4 belles rencontres a notre guesthouse, 2 couples fascinants voyageant a velo depuis l'Europe, un d'Espagne et l'autre de la Suisse! Ils se sont rencontré en chemin et ont trop d'expéiences a raconter! Comparé a leur voyage, le notre c'est de la ''petite biere''. Discuter avec eux change completement la perspective d'un voyage car l'emphase est mise sur le transport lui meme alors que pour nous le transport est seulement la transition entre chaque partie du voyage! On espérait bien les recroiser en chemin et notre veux a été réalisé, mais ca aussi ce sera pour une autre histoire...;)