by Tim Cope
I carried on until sunlight had nearly vanished, then raced to make camp. The cold fell hard, and after unloading, my first priority was Tigon, who was whimpering inconsolably. I wrapped him in a spare horse blanket and zipped him inside my canvas duffle bag. Later, when the tent was up, I opened the bag a little way and dangled a piece of salted pig fat over it. Tigon’s jaws swiftly snapped up the offering, after which he didn’t stir until dinner was on the boil, at which point the bag began hopping toward the stove.
While I set up camp, a process that included driving in stakes, tying tethers, and barricading the side of my tent with the plastic boxes, it was vital to have the horses secured. To prevent them from eating snow initially—it was crucial to let the horses cool down before rehydrating—and stop them from running away, I had devised a system where I would make a rein from their lead ropes, then tie this to their saddles so that they couldn’t dip their heads. The horses would then be tied alongside each other lengthways, facing in opposite directions, so that for them to wander off would involve near impossible coordination. Over the last couple of weeks I had noticed that after two hours of standing like this, their grumpy and impatient mood transformed into one of calm and composure. They had learned that this was an opportunity to rest and that patience was rewarded with a serving of grain.
When dinner was nearly ready I untied them and took off their saddles. Their bodies were as still as statues encrusted in ice, but under the blankets their backs were warm and dry. It had become routine when my hands were numb to place them under the saddle until they came back to life. As Aset had advised, I left the bottom blanket on this night, and folded it out so it covered the horses from wither to rump. This wasn’t to warm them but to reduce the shock as their backs, heated and sweaty, were exposed to the cold.
The tasks at camp were unending, and with everything that needed to be done—packing tomorrow’s lunch, eating half of the stodgy pot of canned meat and pasta (the other half was Tigon’s) before it froze to the bottom, checking the maps, and marking my camp with GPS—there was little time to sit and absorb. One luxurious exception was feeding the horses. The mere rustle of a grain bag brought whickering from all three as they raced to the end of their tethers. This was the only moment of the day that lent itself to some affection, and although I spent twenty-four hours with my animals, it was also my only opportunity to truly acknowledge them. In the darkness I could tell them individually by smell and feel. I rubbed their necks and felt through their manes, under their hairy chins, and along their wooly bellies. Part of the routine involved lifting the blanket and feeling around for any problems. Apart from the sensitive spot on Taskonir’s withers, their backs were clean.
By the time I finished feeding the horses, my feet were numb. I leaped inside the tent, where Tigon had been warming my sleeping bag, and took off my boots. To prevent moisture being absorbed and freezing in them, I wore large plastic bags over my outer socks, and a smaller bag between them and my thermal socks. As I took the bags off and shook them out, the pooled sweat instantly turned to ice. It took an hour for my feet to warm up in the sleeping bag. Tigon was covered in frost even though we were inside the tent. I tried running my hand down his bony spine, but he growled. Although I had grown to lean on him emotionally, I had hardly had a chance to show him much warmth. I felt guilty—how could I have alienated the one little creature who had stuck loyally with me through the tumults of the last eight weeks?
Before I pulled the drawstring of my sleeping bag tight I doused his paws in vodka—a technique to help prevent frostbite—and let him snuggle inside my down jacket. As he drifted off to sleep I had little doubt that he was thinking, Well, thank God Tim is protecting me from the wolves. I too was convinced I was safe in his hands, so we were at least able to get some sleep.
It seemed nonetheless as though I had barely slept when I woke at six o’clock, three hours before sunrise and at the peak of the cold. My body remained tense, and as I felt around my sleeping bag I realized my sweat had formed frozen clumps in the down. This was bad news, since down loses its insulating quality when wet. Once up, I shivered into my jacket and stepped out to check on the horses. Almost at once my feet turned to stone, and I spent the next twenty minutes jogging around the tent.
The horses, by comparison, didn’t seem to be suffering—and for good reason. Descendants of horses that had survived natural selection over thousands of years, they were equipped with a physiology uniquely adapted to the extremes of the steppe. For example, their bodies had the ability to cut off the blood supply to their hooves in extreme cold to conserve heat. Their hairs, lifted slightly away from the body by special muscles under the skin, also gave them the ability to regulate heat loss. Later, in the Ukraine and Russia, where people had a more Western approach to horses, I was told that leaving horses in the open without winter blankets, as nomads did, was unimaginably cruel. I came to think that this view was based on one of several misconceptions that many Westerners hold in relation to the natural horse and therefore the culture of horsemanship on the steppe. Horses in Europe, after all, are blanketed largely to prevent the horse from growing a long winter coat, which is considered unsightly. And if a horse has been blanketed from a young age, the muscles under the skin that control the movement of the hair and thus regulate heat are not able to develop. The horses are therefore unable to keep themselves warm, the need for blankets being a human-induced one. Indigenous to the steppes, my horses had never known blankets, let alone stables, so there was nothing more natural than for them to be standing in the open.
Ahead of me like every morning lay the laborious task of brushing the horses, folding the blankets, saddling, cooking, and packing, a sequence rarely completed in less than three hours. Sliding my hands into textured rubber mitts and brushing the horses was not my favorite chore, but not to brush was sacrilege, since removing sweat, dust, and other matter was crucial for preventing saddle sores.
Getting everything done was a race against sunrise and required all my concentration. That morning, when I tied the last knot in Ogonyok’s load, my feet were still numb and my balaclava an ice mask. Although my thermometer had broken, I later learned that a couple of days’ journey to the north, the temperature had been below −40°C.
Before climbing into the saddle I unfolded the map and pulled my GPS out to double-check the bearing toward Ulanbel. The GPS refused to turn on. Then, when finally the screen flickered to life, none of the saved coordinates were there. The screen flickered a little more, then went blank. Until now the GPS hadn’t been of great use, but in such a featureless environment, with the prospect of blizzards and a map with a scale of 1:500,000 that had been made for airline pilots, the prospect of relying exclusively on a compass was worrying.1
I tried to stay calm, but the predicament was undeniable. It was the twenty-third of December, just a couple of days beyond the solstice, which usually marked the beginning of the coldest period of winter. Ahead of me lay the loneliest section of my journey to date, and I had to get through it with a fragile tent, a frozen sleeping bag, a dodgy pack saddle, numb feet, and a damaged GPS.
No matter how positive I tried to be, the odds seemed to have closed in. The situation also made me think of a different milestone, which I had dismissed until now as unimportant. From the age of eighteen I had spent most Christmases abroad and never paid much attention to the holiday’s significance—and, in truth, had come to think of Christmas as a hollow, commercialized convention best avoided. Now, however, I realized that in my juvenility I had missed the point: Christmas was about relishing the company of loved ones. The thought of being alone and freezing on the “starving steppe” on a day when my family was celebrating together was too much.
I opened up all my maps to see if there was anything remotely closer than Ulanbel. On my large tour map of Kazakhstan there was one dot on the “starving steppe,” marked “Akbakai.” Although it wasn’t on my more detailed chart, there were some roads that converged on the sa
me approximate area, which was about 75 km to the west. These road markings often represented nothing more than faded wheel tracks, and the absence of any marked aul made me think that perhaps Akbakai was an abandoned military base. Then again, it was my only hope. If I was good enough, I could cover the distance in two days and arrive on Christmas Eve.
It was a relief to get moving. Hooves squeaked and snow exploded in plumes. The sky was clear and the air eerily calm, with the snow cover little more than fetlock deep. We moved up the salt pan valley as it narrowed and rose through uplands. My aim was to follow it to a plateau, then beyond to a cluster of hills and small mountains where I hoped to find Akbakai.
Higher up, the valley split into a maze of shallow ravines choked with ak-shi, and in places dotted with thickets of a stumpy steppe tree known as saksaul. The danger of wolves began to prey on my mind. Midwinter was their breeding season—the time when they were apparently at their hungriest and the males hunted in packs. I had been promised by Kazakh herders that wolves would follow me unseen, possibly for days, before choosing their moment to attack. It was commonly said that a pack could take down a full-grown horse or camel. Stories about attacks on humans were also abundant—there was “a lady in the next aul who last year was killed,” or “the boy who went to herd his sheep and never came home.” One of the most common wolf stories was of an attack on a woman and her daughter who had been waiting at a bus stop on a lonely road in winter. The woman had saved her daughter by lifting her onto the roof of the bus stop. All that was found of the mother were her valenki, still filled with the lower part of her legs. The story bears a striking resemblance to one recounted by German explorer Albert von Le Coq, who, in the early twentieth century, was told a story about a girl who had run away from her older husband into the steppe of western China, and “all that was found later were blood-stained fragments of her clothing and her long top-boots with her legs still inside.”2
I later met a Kazakh journalist who had spent months researching stories of wolf attacks on humans. After following hundreds of leads, he had been unable to find firm evidence that any had actually happened. It was always “another aul,” “another time,” and there was no official record of anyone having been eaten by wolves. Whatever the truth, all I had right now were the stories, and in the face of this cold and empty land my earlier skepticism seemed foolhardy.
Just after lunch, when the pale sun was limping toward the horizon, I found myself in the shadowy crevice of a gorge. Ogonyok’s load had come loose, and I leaped off to reload, paranoid about an ambush by wolves. I felt like I was testing my luck to be riding out here alone, and I knew deep down that I shouldn’t have been on the “starving steppe” in winter—the nomads who traditionally might have lived here in spring or summer would have long retreated to warmer, low-lying areas.
We continued on, and by early afternoon the horses had gathered more sweat-frost than I had ever seen. I was thankful I’d trained them to ride with a halter and rope rein instead of with a bridle and bit. Bitless riding, part of a modern trend of “natural horsemanship” in the Western world, had once been practiced widely on the steppe. Genghis Khan forbade the use of bits while armies were on the move. Not only was it beneficial because of the damage a cold bit could do to a horse’s mouth, but the horses could eat and drink freely whenever there was an opportunity. This approach is voiced by the Kazakh saying “Only in an emergency should a young dzhigit [warrior] enter the water in his boots, or should a horse be allowed to drink in its bridle.”
It was essential to cover at least half the distance to Akbakai if I was to make it by Christmas Eve, but in my rush I took several wrong turns up narrow, winding ravines and had to backtrack to the main valley. Feeling rushed, I pushed beyond nightfall under moonlight, willing the horses into a trot.
Tigon was soon exhausted. At one stage when I halted to check the map, he must have curled up under a grass tussock in the snow, thinking we had stopped for camp. I continued on without realizing he had been left behind—that is, until I heard a desperate whimper ring out through the frozen night air. He was sprinting to catch up.
By the time I made camp the temperature had fallen further and the snow glowed an ethereal blue. I struggled to hammer the tent pegs in, and when I inserted the tent poles they broke through the fabric sleeves. My camping stove refused to ignite, and I spent half an hour pulling it apart and cleaning it—a task involving bare fingers.
There was a voice inside my head reminding me that as long as I took care and didn’t rush or pin my hopes on Akbakai, then everything would be okay. Stupid decisions such as this—making camp long after dark and trotting blindly over snowy terrain—could prove disastrous. Yet I couldn’t break my growing obsession with finding company for Christmas Day. Akbakai, I fantasized, would be an aul where the akim would welcome me in and I would take refuge in the embrace of a family. I imagined sitting around a table telling stories about my travels, in the security of a warm home bathed with the golden light of a fireplace.
I slept lightly, afraid that at any moment a storm would roll in from the mountains and knock down my damaged tent, or, worse, that I would wake to find the horses under attack by wolves.
At dawn we set off at a trot and rose to a plateau where the fragile calm was broken by raking winds. A great, hazy, white emptiness flowed down from all sides. There were no features, shadows, or depth to give any scale at all—the world had been distilled to pale blue, white, and the rumble of wind. Destinations and landmarks didn’t seem to exist, the geography more a landscape of changing moods. Usually this emptiness instilled a sense of freedom, but now it brought dread. I tried to be conservative and plan for the event that Akbakai either didn’t exist or was abandoned. Even if it was somewhere out there, my compass bearing had to be only marginally off target and I could pass it without knowing.
It was just as the sun was gliding into my line of vision that I caught sight of something through my monocular that gave me hope—a tower. The horses were tired, struggling to lift their hooves through the snow. I egged them on with the promise of hay and shelter.
For the next two hours there were times when I was sure Akbakai was just a derelict ghost town, then others when I thought I could see a tendril of smoke. I could make out strange buildings unlike any I had seen in farming auls, which made me think it might be, as I had suspected, an abandoned Soviet military base.
When Ogonyok’s load came loose after dark, I lost my cool and let out a string of curses. The voice of common sense was still there and told me to stop rushing, but the intoxicating vision of hot tea and company possessed me.
I began to stir from my stupor as we limped through some twisted scrap metal on the deserted outskirts. I was stiff as wood. The horses hung their heads in fatigue. As wind filled my ears, Tigon’s whimpering rose in pitch. We had made it to Akbakai, but I’d forgotten that no one was waiting for us.
12
THE PLACE THAT GOD FORGOT
The only sign of life I could find on the edge of Akbakai in the failing light of Christmas Eve was the shadowy figure of a man hunched over a pile of firewood. Maksim, as he was known, suspected that I was a lost Russian geologist at best, and at worst an escaped prisoner on the run. After much pleading, he reluctantly led me to a half-built mud-brick shack. I tied the horses in the windowless end of the structure, then, together with Tigon, climbed into a small adjoining room. Inside, the flickering of a coal stove offered a fragmented picture of two old spring beds, mattresses, and cardboard-matted floor. Vitka and Grisha, the Russian laborers living here, were too inebriated to speak, but details didn’t matter. I was out of the wind, I was warm, and I was not alone.
Christmas morning brought a more sobering reality. Wakened by a couple of puppies licking my face, I pried my eyes open to a panorama of dog shit, piles of empty vodka bottles, and a frying pan filled with ossified potato sediment and congealed fat. Lying under a pile of rags on the other bed, Vitka and Grisha were dead to the world
but alive with the stench of body odor, tobacco, and alcohol. They were truck drivers from southern Kazakhstan who had been stranded in Akbakai since being caught drunk at the wheel and losing their licenses two years earlier.
Eventually they were stirred by their own snoring, and when they learned who I was, they cried: “Australian! We understand that today is your Christmas. By all means we will have a celebration tonight. A treat!”
When it was light enough I left the hut to search for hay and grain. Akbakai was not the herding community I had hoped for. The streets were littered with frozen clumps of rubbish, and lined with rubble and mangled machinery wreckage. Homes were a medley of mud-brick houses barricaded with tall fences. Some appeared to be semi-underground. There were few signs of animal shelters, and I only had to look to the edge of town to know why.
To the west and south heavy trucks labored through dirty, blackened snow. Beyond them the trapezoid shape of mine shaft headframes cast eerie silhouettes against the sky. Akbakai was a gold-mining town, and the livability of the environment had been an afterthought. Built on a range of rocky hills, the town had no natural water supplies, nor was water provided by the government. The handful of people who kept a milking cow were fiercely protective of fodder and water—both were precious resources shipped in from far away.
After hours of fruitless searching, I pried some concessions out of the local hunting inspector. He let me climb up his ice-encrusted water tank to fill pails for my horses, and agreed to sell me hay to last twenty-four hours—but no more than that.