Tag: adventure

A day with the King: Khairatkhan

The morning after the night before

saw me pottering on one of the horses.

My FIRST ride

on the famous Mongolian pony.

Like nothing I could have imagined.

A few more self indulgent moments before the Real Thing.

Like the prelude to the Real Performance.

Self Indulgence, I know 😂

and one more for the moment …..

my first crossing of the ice – cautious – both of us.

No need for the helmet – rather for a head warmer.

AND THEN THE AWE INSPIRING PRIVILEGE

of riding with the EAGLE HUNTER HIMSELF

Khairatkhan and his beautiful ‘girl’

We rode with him to the top of the mountain,

watching and waiting for a fox –

Waiting and…..
……watching

Interestingly, eagles cannot fly uphill,

they climb up hills.

But oh can they soar downhill.

Oh do they have amazing eye sight.

Oh does the combination make them powerful hunters.

There is patience needed.

There are good eyes needed.

There is speed needed.

Binoculars
Mobile Phone
The new world

There is also teamwork needed.

Khairatkhan and his eagle.

Solid relationship
Between hunters
Stable reliable horse
Support below

Support down below.

A reliable solid horse

The aim is to get an undamaged fox skin,

which means getting to the capture before the eagle begins damaging this fox.

There is so much patience required.

Wanting to hunt isn’t the same as hunting.

There has to be something to hunt.

And not today.

So Khairatkhan showed us how he trains her.

Fascinating in itself.

The eagle gets fed daily, but never much.

This is to keep her alert and ready to hunt.

There is cantering to ensure balance between rider, eagle and horse is solid.

And then I was lucky enough to have some fun time.

One on one and such a privilege.

And a self indulgent slide show ….. of you know who 😉

And so an amazing experience ends….

Little did I know what was still to come ;

No not steak knives 🤣.

A farewell to our lovely hosts;

a drive back to Ulaankhus

a delicious meal and beds.

Little did I know there was

SO MUCH MORE TO COME.

An adventure like no other…..

Today saw an early early start

flying from Ulaanbaatar northwest to Ogiiy

Flight across Mongolia
Ogyii on the edge of the Altai Mountains

And in case you interested,

the Mazaalai is the Gobi bear.;

a subspecies of the Brown bear and critically endangered.

(we did not see any, but then again, we were not in the Gobi)

On the other hand, what we did see, is almost impossible to describe.

But being me, I will try 🙄

Ogiiy is the regional ‘city’

It is the capital of the Bayan-Ölgii Aimag (province) of Mongolia,

located in the extreme west of the country on the banks of the Khovd River.

Populations 50 000

The airport
A slog up to a viewing point
Gave us our first images of the Altai
And Ogii
In the distane

and if you look carefully, you will see a massive land slide

and destroyed homes.

The entire suburb had to be moved and rebuilt.

All those are destroyed homes

and then off we went to our new ‘home’

not a great distance in kilometres,

but an enormous distance in experience.

Helping along the way……

And it was so so cold, I felt so sorry for this woman, pillion and half frozen.

That is Yerlan, our amazing driver, cook, mechanic, clown,

general Great Guy.

This was to be our home for the present.

A very humble, beautiful, warm, friendly home.

Two doorways. The first into a small, shall we call vestibule.

It houses animal food, animals, and general ‘stuff’

like baby bleating goats brought in from the cold at night.

Our beautiful translator and care giver, Shuakh

Our generous hostess Minekhan;

who opened her home to a stranger, me,

who when I left, felt like family

and the famous Khairatkhan, eagle hunter, our host.

He has lived with eagles for 40 years and had about ten of his own.

(they release them back into the wild after 5 years)

The eagle (almost always female) are fed once a day

and never too much (ie kept alert to hunt)

There is a fascinating video for those that are keen to know more about

eagle hunting.

Meanwhile, we stayed with him and his wife.

and I had the BEST time.

Language was no barrier as we muddled through the day,

laughed, pointed, showed and shared.

There were goats to sort
Yaks to feed
Cows to milk
Eagle to be fed

There is dung to collect

Fires to stoke

There was patience required as the tea heated

Tea, dates, biscuits, bread and honey. 🥰

Meals to share – for some reason our faces are not as happy as our souls were 😂

But here our smiles matched our soul connection.

The ubiquitous mobile – the link to the family, the country, the world.

Down Time.

Before bed

Our rooms for the night.

Beds, a luxury.

I was honoured with sharing our hosts‘ room at their insistence.

I am sure they sleep each in their own bed usually,

but they ’snuggled’ up into thesmall stretcher bed –

honoured.

A moment captured as Khairatkhan nurtures his horse
Our fridge for winter
Always waiting
If you know, you know, if to you dont, you wont want to
Fluffy, uncomplicated, patient, fast, and dont try to cuddle me 😳

And here is an attempt to highlight the eagle hunter,

his magnificent bird

his great horse

and his life.

Did I say HORSE?

Did I say RIDING?

Did I say EAGLE HUNTING?

Yup, well next blog will bring you that…….

😂🤣

Contentment

It is difficult to put into words the sense of well being that is possible after a long day of physical adventure, a hot bath, a seat on the verandah – as opposed to a seat on a horse 🙂

img_2555

We are in the Howqua Valley, the river in front of me; the sound of its strong flow mingling with so many birds roosting for the night.   The sun is setting and the trees appear luminous as the last rays filter through them.   And the daffodils watch on as they clearly have done season after season.

Strange name Howqua, with equally strange possible origins, after a Chinese tea very popular during the 19th Century, after a Chinese surveyor of the area, (Ah Kin Wowqua);  a derivative of   Mount Howitt, where the river rises, and aqua; or if you prefer, after John “Howka” Hunter (1820–68), a pastoralist.  I am guessing any will do, but it is probably better known as the countryside where they filmed The Man From Snowy River.

PatersonTheManFromSnowyRiver1966ed900h

Which brings me back to the ride….  well almost back to the ride.   Firstly though, I must remind you that riding and taking photographs are almost mutually exclusive, and even more so when you are not riding alone and cannot just stop at will.    So most of the photographs we tried to take ended up in the ‘trash’ bin – you will need to engage your imagination if you mean to capture even a fraction of this adventure.