by Tim Cope
9
BALKHASH
A good 40 km from the raz’ezd where I’d nearly lost Taskonir, I crested a rise and brought the horses to a standstill. It was near sunset, and a low ceiling of dark clouds pressed down on the earth, rendering the steppe a uniform black. This had been the norm in recent days, but now to the south, east, and west, where the land ordinarily petered out into a smudgy embrace with the horizon, it merged with the broad, silvery waters of Lake Balkhash.
From a height and distance such as this, as vast as the lake appeared, it was not hard to imagine it was but a mere puddle on the canvas of the Eurasian steppe, draining the snowmelt of Central Asia’s Tien Shan farther south. It was a reminder that although it was November 30, nearly five months since I had climbed into the saddle, I had come little more than a fifth of the distance to the Danube. West of Lake Balkhash still lay the most challenging landscapes of my journey—the Betpak Dala (“starving steppe”), then the deserts surrounding the Aral Sea. Even then, I would only just be reaching the halfway point to Hungary.
As I let my eyes be drawn in to the sense of space and grandeur before me, the bigger picture melted away and I became absorbed in the details of the land immediately in front of us. A series of peninsulas, coves, and bays formed an intriguing corrugated look to the northern shoreline of Lake Balkhash, the scale and drama of which could be more accurately described as an ocean coastline. For the next week or so I hoped to forget about the attempted horse theft and lose myself in the shore’s furrows. We had traveled about half the length of Balkash’s saline eastern half along the railway, and from here my aim was to avoid human contact for as long as I could manage and somehow find enough fresh water to be self-sufficient. I hoped that would prepare me—physically and mentally—to carry on farther west as the real winter set in.
On this first evening I camped on the highest hill I could find. Overnight it snowed heavily enough that by morning there was no need to find water. The next afternoon I felt my way down through gullies to the shore of the lake.
Close up, Lake Balkhash was even more spellbinding than from afar. When the sun came out, the water was a rich azure. Small swells arose and crashed onto veneers of ice that had formed around the lake edges. Soon, I surmised, both these vast bodies—the sea-like steppe and the lake itself—would fuse as one.
The period of on-and-off freezing—characterized by cold nights but warmish days—would prove a stroke of luck. There were polished pieces of relatively salt-free ice being washed up on the pebbly beach. There began a routine that would last for a couple of weeks—collecting ice during the day in plastic bags, and melting it in the evening for drinking water and dinner. The horses crunched on this ice as well, although they also began to drink water from the lake. It was a sign the lake was becoming less brackish the farther west we traveled.
As I rode, the evolving contours of the shoreline made for an engaging story. Flats grew into muscled hills, which in turn became stony ridges overlooking the lake. In places the earth below came to life with a smattering of red, green, yellow, and purple pebbles, but then these gave way to soft clay and patches of sand, where getting to the lakeshore meant fighting through marshes and tall reeds. The horses moved briskly, their pack boxes rattling rhythmically, hooves clipping the frost off plants. We trotted ten to twenty minutes each hour and set a fast walk in between.
At night when the dangers and fears seemed to crowd in, the growing sense of family with my animals provided comfort. The responsibility of being their leader and protector gave me more courage than I would have had alone. There was nothing better than falling asleep on a luxurious mattress of saddle blankets as the horses grazed around my tent. The sweet smell of horse sweat, hair, and leather permeated every waking moment.
Although my aim was to remain unseen, it wasn’t possible to avoid people entirely. In places the railway hugged the shore, and I could see raz’ezds in the distance. There was also the odd mud hut camouflaged into the side of the hills, but the fishermen who inhabited them were just as reclusive and unwilling to be seen as I. I met only one of these men—a shriveled old Russian who came out to ask if I had vodka and if I was “migrating.” Later I was told more about these poachers, and how the state authorities would sometimes send helicopters out to spot the illegal fishing shanties.
Especially in light of the scattered human presence, I relished the test of finding campsites hidden from prying eyes. The longer I evaded humans, the less likely it was that anyone would know to expect me, let alone look for or find me. It was rewarding to feel that only the land and my animals knew of my existence.
It was during a rest day, while I sheltered in the tent from flurries of snow and sleet, that I realized the wear and tear on my equipment had been creeping up on me. Much of my gear, which up until now I had considered new, was falling apart. My list of problems to solve, as I wrote it in my diary, went thus: Trousers falling apart—winter hat needs sewing up—tent has another few holes (seems to be falling apart)—buckles broken on saddle—gloves need sewing up—hobbles need to be fixed—stirrup leathers almost knackered—zip on my jacket is going—tripod leg broken—stakes need straightening. Oddly enough, perhaps, given the length of the journey that still stretched in front of me, I found it satisfying I had reached a stage of the journey when nothing was new and shiny and I had to persevere without the aid of the freshness with which I had begun. Some romantic part of me hoped all my foreign equipment would eventually fade away and I would be forced to borrow exclusively from the indigenous ways. Only then I could become part of the landscape like the nomads whom I so wanted to understand.
Eventually the steppe began to offer some more generous pasture. There were more signs of life, too. One frosty morning we came face-to-face with a herd of shaggy Bactrian camels. All three horses—which were from eastern Kazakhstan and therefore had never seen camels—reared, muscles tensing and nostrils flaring. I was riding Zhamba at the time and could feel his heart pounding through my lower legs. In a fraction of a second, I found myself a substantial distance from where we had been standing, holding on for life as the horses bolted away. Tigon, for his part, didn’t help things when he began herding the whole group of camels toward us.
For the first time since leaving Kopa, I came across nomads’ dome tombs. One in particular was at least 5 m high and made of well-preserved mud brick. Its entry was facing south, just like a yurt, and Tigon and I ate our lunch inside, huddled out of the wind. When I was moving again I scanned the surrounding area, imagining where camps might have been and herds might have grazed.
One week after we left the last raz’ezd, our bubble was finally broken. I was wakened at dawn by a whinnying from Ogonyok, and broke out of the tent. Two paces from the sleeping bag I stopped in my tracks: Ogonyok and Taskonir stood facing me with their ears back and hind legs flexed. Behind them in the half-light was the ghostly figure of a dark, wooly stallion. He snorted, demanding a confrontation. Beyond him, hidden among the shrubbery, were a hundred beady eyes and ears straight as nails. They were barrel-chested little horses with thick necks, coarse split manes, and brands on their hindquarters. Very Mongolian, I thought.
We all froze until Tigon came to his senses and sprinted over with the most aggressive bark he could muster. Foals, mares, and geldings broke into a gallop, and the steppe came to life with a thousand muffled thuds and the splintering of twigs. In their wake shrubs quivered, but even they soon returned to stillness.
It had been so long since I had seen another horse—more than two weeks—that I had forgotten the magic of it. In fact, the last two weeks had been the first time on the journey when the distant silhouette of a horseman hadn’t been as common as the rising sun. I missed the cry of a herder, the rustle of a flock of sheep, and the movement of horses, all of which brought a sense of vitality to the steppe.
It was time to take a gamble with humans. Besides, the weather of late had been getting cold—around -10°C—and I was out of grain. And t
he next day was my twenty-sixth birthday.
From camp it didn’t take long to discover a kstau by following the converging trails of sheep and goats through tall tussocks of ak-shi, or white grass. Ever since coming across this grass the previous evening I’d known it was a good sign: a herdsman in western Mongolia had once told me that wherever ak-shi grew, Kazakh nomads have always lived. Sometimes towering taller than a rider in the saddle, it provided shelter for sheep and goats, survival food for horses, and an indispensable resource for nomads. Its woody husks became so thick and strong that the tallest blades were gathered, assembled in a mat, and placed upright between the collapsible lattice walls of the yurt and the insulating felt, acting as a natural screen to keep out flies and rodents when the felt was lifted up to let the cool air in. They were also used as drying trays and bird-proof covers for dried curd.
I sighted the kstau from the safety of the ak-shi, and it took some time before I mustered the courage to come out of hiding. Holding Tigon back and keeping his snout closed with my hand, I spied on the man who had his head down and was fixing an old motorcycle. Only after waiting for some herders in the distance to move out of view with their flocks of sheep and goats did I ride out into the open.
I was nearly on the man before he spun around and looked up at our caravan. I took the initiative.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Are you the owner? Do you have water? Do you have grain? Is there a trail from here to Balkhash? How far is the closest aul?”
Even as I spoke I could see Tigon out of the corner of my eye, sniffing around in reconnaissance. To my dismay when he pissed on things he did it crouching, like the puppy he still was, betraying his age and belying our fanciful cover as tough, hardened beings of the steppe.
The man, named Kuat, was the owner of this grazing station, and as he answered my questions ran his eyes meticulously over my horses. He began with the front hooves, then went up the legs to the mouth and across their backs to the rump before following the curves down from the hindquarters, finishing off with a peek underneath to confirm they were geldings and not stallions or mares. I was beginning to understand that you could read more about a person from his animals than his words.
There was a short silence thereafter, suggesting he was putting together the funny foreign equipment and my accent.
“So my dogs were not mistaken!” he said at last. “When they started barking last night we thought there were wolves. Your horses are hungry. I have some feed for them. Let’s go drink tea.”
Only inside the warm confines of his hut did I begin to relax. This was part of my plan to drop my guard cautiously, layer by layer. It became a protocol that I would adhere to religiously.
The first step was trusting the stranger enough to get out of my saddle. I kept in mind a saying that a Kazakh once told me: “When walking past the behind of a foreign horse, unless you have spoken first to its owner, keep walking.”
If I felt comfortable after getting out of the saddle, I would risk unloading the animals and enter the home. Only over a cup of tea would I explain who I was and where I was headed. I also learned to monitor Tigon’s reaction—if his tail shot down and he shied away from the host with a growl, it was better to move on. The ultimate shedding of defenses was unsaddling the horses, having some vodka with my host, and stripping down to thermal underwear for bed. To sleep without the hard handle of the knife on my belt digging into my hips—I never took my trousers off at camp on the steppe—was a luxury, but concurrently made me aware of being at the mercy of my hosts. I would then have no choice but to cave in to trust and exhaustion.
A couple of herders who worked for Kuat joined us for tea and bread. Although Kazakhs almost exclusively eat meat and dairy, bread and salt are considered sacred, able to draw guests from afar. Not eating or trying the bread shows disrespect.
As I cradled the tea and dipped the bread into some fresh kaimak (cream), we talked exclusively at first about pasture and the weather. This environment, with its soft sandy soil and vegetation, was a relative paradise and I recounted the harrowing land that I had been traveling through. They were impressed, but mostly intrigued to hear I had encountered their herd of horses. Had I seen the foals? Had I seen the stallion? What did I think about them?
With the second round of tea came the familiar questions: “Do you have parents? Where are your horses from? How did you find us?” And finally: “Where are you from?”
They tried to veil their excitement, but it was too much when I explained it was my birthday the next day. “Then it is decided. You must stay here to celebrate!”
I spent the rest of the day tinkering away with repairs and letting the adrenaline of the past two weeks turn to fatigue. Kuat, who had moved gracefully into his middle age with silver hair and was educated as an agriculturalist, had an authority born of life on the steppe, and I felt myself leaning toward trusting him. I knew it was risky, but I needed a rest, and so I accepted his invitation. It might have been an achievement to survive alone for some time, but not trusting in people wasn’t sustainable.
At dawn the next morning I sat bolt upright, my recurring dream leaving a residue in my mind, and reached for the tent door. By the time I recalled where I was, I was fully awake, so I stepped outside to water the horses. Tigon, who was sleeping on a horse blanket next to my saddle, opened one eye briefly before tucking his nose further under his tail and pretending he hadn’t seen me. I would have gone back to bed had I not noticed a shadowy figure coming out to the barn.
In the half-light Bazibek, a sixty-year-old herder, was limping bow-legged over to a camel. He had a gun slung over his shoulder and was wearing felt boots and a traditional fox-fur hat. His body looked as rigid and gaunt as an old skinny sheep, and wind had eroded his face, stranding his cheeks like broad boulders in a furrowed mess of landslips. For forty years straight he had worked as a chaban, and he set about saddling the camel, his motions sure as the rising sun, silent and unrushed. Age had worn away his agility, but everything he did, from fitting the felt blanket to tightening the girth and hanging the rifle from the front hump, was done with precision. I had the feeling he was trying not to wake the land. Even when he spoke to me he did so in a husky whisper. How was it that, despite its size and harshness, the land felt so tender at this time of day?
When the flock of sheep had been let out of a pen, Bazibek hauled himself into the saddle, and the camel rose. It was a dramatic transformation, he and the camel becoming one. Bazibek was now the eyes, the camel the legs, and in that moment the frailty of Bazibek’s age vanished. As I was told by many, on the steppe men learned to ride before they could walk, and could still ride a stallion after they could no longer stand. Directing his sheep with a long pole and whip, Bazibek set off into the distance, calling rhythmically. Since the days were now so short, he would only step out of the saddle at dusk, when he returned.
Long after he had gone the look in his eyes stuck with me. There was a humble, faraway expression there that told something of the simplicity of the steppe. I had begun to feel it myself, out there all day—the steppe consumed and gently coaxed you into a motion and rhythm until you intuitively knew your place on this earth.
It was with this enchantment I returned to the hut for breakfast and Kuat said something that stirred me further: “Do you know that Genghis Khan and his men stayed here?”
I looked up at him, with his hair all awry and his mustache glistening wet above the steam pouring from his teacup. He looked a little nervous—perhaps it had taken courage for him to say it, as if it were a secret, or he was risking ridicule.
“Really? How do you know?” I asked.
“The old men know.”
There was probably no written evidence to suggest the legend was true, but among a people for whom oral history had been the bedrock of knowledge, it was foolish to discard such legends. Within these stories was always an element of truth.
As I mulled over this conversation with Kuat in the coming days, I f
ound several reasons to think it was possible that the area had borne the hoofprints of Mongols’ horses. The ak-shi was a sign that the area was a relative oasis, suitable for a winter or summer camp, and I knew the region had long been home to nomads. And then there was the geographical location. It was here, at the very narrowest point of Lake Balkhash, that the fresh waters of the west flowed through the bottleneck into the saline eastern part. Because of the abundance of fresh water, this part of the lake would freeze over even early in the winter, and it would have been possible for an army to ride across the short stretch of ice to the southern shore.
Most important, the southern shore of the lake marked the northern border of the strategic Jeti-su or “Seven Rivers” region. The Jeti-su stretched from Lake Balkhash to the Tien Shan in the south; its extensive river systems traditionally supported a symbiotic mix of nomadic and more agrarian sedentary societies. From the Bronze Age to the present, aspiring empires—including those of the Usuns (a Turkic people in the third century BCE), the Huns, the Mongols, and Tamerlane—knew that whoever ruled the Jeti-su controlled a vast swath of Central Asia. This fact was not lost on the Russians, who in the middle of the nineteenth century established Almaty in the heart of the Jeti-su—it became Kazakhstan’s largest city, and was the capital until Nazarbayev moved it to Astana in 1997.
The more I dwelled on it, the more I reasoned that this land just north of Lake Balkhash seemed like a logical retreat for armies between campaigns. It would have been a remote hinterland home to hardened nomads who had much in common with the Mongols, and ideal for grazing horses. In summer—the season for planning and grazing, not war—the lake would have offered natural protection from the south. In light of this, I wondered whether Kuat’s herd of horses might have been the descendants of Mongol mounts. Still, it all seemed very farfetched, a romantic hope that I had stumbled on a piece of the nomad puzzle.