Wild Horse Games

I still have so many pictures from the Issyk-Kul trip, so that I will just continue posting them, although it's been a couple of weeks by now.

We were very lucky to get invited to some horse games near Tscholpon-Ata. It was a show for tourists (because Tschlopon-Ata is THE tourist destination at the lake), so we could tell that it wasn't as serios as the games we had seen last year for Independence Day, which was a real tournament.

In the game for example happened to be a fight between two players of the opposing teams. They were getting at each other with their whips. But we think it was fake and just set up for the show. But it was still interesting, because I love to see the massive power of horses and I loved to take pictures of the event (last year's didn't come out great).

They showed all different kinds of traditional games. The first one is called "kök börü" and played in teams. It basically works like soccer - except for the ball is a dead body of a goat (without the head). It gets picked up from the floor in the beginning of the game. This is fascinating to see, because it's hard to remain in the saddle at the same time and the goat seems to be really heavy (30 kg I heard). Then the player who picked it up, holds the goat with his thigh and tries to get to the goal, which consists of an elevated hole. Of course, meanwhile the other team tries to take the goat from him. It's amazing to see how the horses must be trained, because it doesn't look like they get a lot of commands from their rider, but as if they just know what to do. And they are so powerful.

The second game is called "sodarysch" can basically be described as wrestling on horses. Two guys wearing a certain type of belt, try to get each other off the horses (if I got the rules right). It was great to watch how much fun they obviously had. I was just wondering why they actually need the horses. They just seemed to be in their way somehow...

The third game is one of my favorites - "kis kummai" (meaning something like "catch the girl"). It's a race between a guy and a girl. While they go really fast for about 200 m the guy has to try to kiss the girl in the first round. Every kiss a point. Then they race back and the girl is supposed to hit the guy with her whip. Each hit a point. Very easy. Very clear. Fun to watch - especially the way back!

[to be continued]