by Tim Cope
Bundled up in an old woolen vest and buttonless coat that Baitak had given me to see me through the remaining cold, I hauled myself up into the saddle, whistled for Tigon, and hunched forward into the wind. When some time later that I took a peek over my shoulder the steppe was empty.2
Ahead of me now stretched nearly 150 km of the Betpak Dala to the aul of Ulanbel. In the wake of winter this formerly frozen wilderness had become a waterless desert, and to get through I hoped to find puddles of remaining snowmelt.
For the first three days we hugged the edge of brown silty salt flats, passing in and out of cloud shadows that wobbled and rippled over the land’s undulations. Hills no more than bumps were akin to mountains in this exposed, flat land. They emerged from the earth in front of us, passed by our flanks, and then with time shriveled away behind.
Despite the cold and the ragged, ice-charred appearance of the earth—its many plants crushed and flattened by the snow—there were early signs of spring: yellow wrens jumping toward the tent door and V-formations of geese cutting the sky. What captured me most were the shoots of grass emerging beneath tough desert plants. Resilient enough to defy the odds of winter, here was the miracle sustaining life itself. The horses were electrified by the sight and spent much of their free time trying to reach the new growth, often succeeding only in scratching their noses on the tough, brittle plants above.
Tigon, for his part, was beside himself with excitement. The snow was nearly gone, so his paws didn’t freeze, yet it wasn’t too warm, which meant he could run forever and barely had to let his tongue out to cool down. He galloped about, digging, chasing, and sniffing, often running parallel with us on distant ridges. Periodically he returned to my caravan to check in and give the horses a lick on the face. Zhamba and Ogonyok didn’t seem to mind this, but Taskonir, being the hardened old grump he was, usually snapped back and warned Tigon with a hoof pounded into the dirt. Tigon couldn’t understand this unfriendliness and would peer up at me all concerned, his amber eyes aglow and his tail between his legs.
On the fourth day the temperature had risen and the remaining snow from the otamal had melted. Dust devils hurled across the flats, sometimes hitting us with a cloud of dust and sand. I became stuck in a series of salt bogs and was forced to retreat. The horses were thirsty, and the absence of sturdy ground made the going slow.
Late in the evening I put my compass away and followed a large bird of prey instead. It took me up into red rocky ridges, from where I could look down on never-ending salt flats to the south and at rising steppe to the north, where jagged little mountains cut the horizon. I reveled in the feeling that as the horizons were expanding, my own world was shrinking to the intimate family circle of animals I had known previously.
When I reached the top of the ridge the bird took off a little farther. Not only did it lead me straight to a set of old wheel tracks heading west, but it was now perched on one of two large round piles of rocks and earth. They were the unmistakable sign of ancient nomad graves.
Before moving on I dismounted and stood for some time. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to make this same journey a hundred years ago. I had little doubt that in early times I could have made my way right across the steppe from aul to aul, directed by people who, from the saddle, knew every corner of their land. To some degree I had experienced this in Mongolia, where even in the most hostile of country it was rare that a yurt or a rider couldn’t be seen somewhere on the horizon and approached for advice. I felt as though I was treading through the graveyard not only of the individuals who lay before me but an entire people and their way of life.3
After leaving the graves I found some snowmelt pooled in a rocky gully and the following afternoon reached the perimeter of the Betpak Dala. To the south, the plateau I had been on dropped away to a sprawling plain. A myriad of lakes and marshes and the Chu River glinted in the sun, and beyond them lay the burning red sand of the Moiynkum Desert.
We camped on the edge of this plateau, with the water tower and homes of Ulanbel on the horizon. At dinnertime the horses crowded around to pinch food from my pot, and Tigon barked indignantly at them to steer clear of what he thought was rightly his. I felt proud and relieved. If I could make it to Ulanbel, then maybe Hungary was possible.
Everyone I had spoken to in Akbakai warned that in Ulanbel not only would my horses be stolen, but I would be “stripped naked and left with nothing.”
Abdrakhman had shaken his head ominously on the day of my departure. “Timurbek! Be careful! You won’t find any Baitaks in Ulanbel!”
For such a small, isolated aul, it didn’t seem credible that it could be full of bandits, yet there was a reason for its reputation. As recently as the year 2000, the Betpak Dala had been home to a unique migratory species of antelope known as saiga. Believed to be related to fauna from the era of the mammoth, and a living genetic link between antelope and sheep, the saiga was renowned for its speed, said to be around 95 kph. In Akbakai many had described to me how until the late 1990s Ulanbel had been swamped by hundreds of thousands of the animals as they swept through during annual migrations. There were apparently so many you could almost catch them by hand in the streets, people said.
For years now, though, in the middle of a region once called the “Serengeti of Central Asia,” barely a single saiga had been sighted. The sad reality was that the collapse of the economy and of the rule of law in the 1990s had triggered an explosion in poaching, particularly of the male saiga, the horns of which are used to make cold and flu remedies in China. The estimated 800,000 saiga living on the steppes of Kazakhstan and southern Russia in 1990 were said to have dwindled to less than 40,000—almost none of which lived on the Betpak Dala.
The genocide of the Betpak Dala’s saiga population had been partly coordinated from Ulanbel. Conveniently isolated from central authorities, it had had become renowned as a hotbed for traders, poachers, and contraband dealers. Nowadays—or so Baitak had heard—things had settled down because the poachers had run out of saiga to shoot. Baitak therefore reasoned that my horses would be in even greater danger of being stolen by “bored,” “out-of-work” criminals.
With knowledge of this state of affairs weighing on my mind, I nervously crossed the Chu River to the southern banks where the aul lay. The bridge did not bode well—halfway across I had to dismount and lead the horses around holes big enough for a car to fall through. Safely on the far side, and still on foot, however, I was overwhelmed by an entirely different world. There were stone huts and fences, and mud-brick homes rising from wide, sandy streets. Cows wandered lazily about, a motorbike could be heard starting up somewhere, and there was even an old man with a few token teeth leading his donkey and cart to the river. I could hardly remember a place so positively blooming with life.
There was admittedly little time to indulge in a sense of reverie. No sooner had I reached the main street than a man came rushing from his home dressed in a green silky gown and fur hat. He stood at a distance, hands on hips:
“As-salam aleikum! Sell me your black horse! I like your black horse!”
“No! I need my horse! I will not sell!” I said, clambering back up into the saddle.
As the man drew near, Tigon sniffed at his crotch, and he raised his hands in fright. I came to my senses. The man’s greeting to me had been a compliment, I realized, and in any case, the man’s plump belly, rosy cheeks, and distinctive Kazakh mustache hardly presented a picture of intimidation. Five minutes later, I was in his family home drinking tea.
Temir, as he introduced himself, was adamant that I stay the night and proceeded to tell me that the name Ulanbel meant “red hillside” in Mongolian, which referenced the long sandy ridge seen to the south in the Moiynkum Desert. The aul had previously been home to a sheep farm collective that peaked at about 60,000 head but which had since been dissolved. About 10,000 sheep remained among private individuals. The herders who once had worked for the collective had turned their skills to poac
hing saiga, fishing, and digging up rock to be sold for the making of fences, homes, and animal pens.
The rumors I had heard in Akbakai about saiga seemed to be true. Temir asked me with a hopeful look whether I had seen any during my ride. I replied that I had not, and he shook his head sadly. Even now, with the saiga on the very brink, there were apparently instances of the odd kill, and locals were still trading in the horns they could find scattered out on the steppe.
Given what I had already learned about the pillaging of Kazakhstan’s resources in Tasaral and Akbakai, this was really more of the same, but when Temir began to tell me about nomads and how they lived in the desert nearby, my ears perked up.
“You are in luck, Tim. Word is they are on the move, and will be coming through Ulanbel tomorrow on their way to the Betpak Dala.”
Just after lunch the following day the idleness of the aul was broken by a wildfire of barking. A great cloud of sand and dust billowed in from the southern horizon like a main sail. Tigon, who had already joined a rabble army of local dogs, charged off in hysteria, his tail pointed sky high.
By the time I made it to the bridge I had been hit by the wafting aroma of livestock. What had been a desolate road angling into the aul from the desert was now throbbing with a tangle of five hundred sheep and goats, fifty horses, twenty shaggy camels, and a few donkeys. Ahead of them, breaking through a bow wave of dust, grunted a Russian truck full to bursting with belongings, and behind it a motorcycle with a sidecar brimming with wide-eyed toddlers. Bringing the group up from the rear were several men, one of them an old gray-bearded man who wore a purple fox-fur hat and sat astride a gray horse.
Upon reaching the bridge, the leaders in the truck lay down planks and boards to cover the holes. After a brief pause to let the animals drink, the whole caravan then rumbled over to the northern bank. Within half an hour the caravan had come and gone, and the dust had settled as if they had never been.
Eager to know more, I paid Temir’s son to follow the caravan by motor-bike to where they were planning to stop for camp. Tigon came with us, sprinting behind, leaving his own plumes of dust and sand.
What had been a silent steppe the previous day now bustled with movement. Toddlers played with baby goats in the back of the truck while large pieces of brown felt were unfurled and a team effort got under way to build a yurt. There were fifteen or so members of the extended family group to be accommodated between the yurt and a rusty old wagon that had been towed in by the truck.
First the collapsible lattice walls were put up, then the many roof poles to support the circular ring at the apex of the ceiling. After the felt had been pulled on, a young boy was sent scrambling up to the top to make adjustments. The silver-bearded elder directed with stern but soft commands.
When the yurt was erect the women set about decorating the insides with felt carpets and wall hangings. Outside, fencing for pens was set up, and a trench dug around the yurt. As proof that the pens were necessary, I was shown two horses with shredded rumps—the victims of a wolf attack.
By dark, the yurt was furnished, sheep were settling into their pens in a chorus of snorts, farts, and snuffles, and freshly slaughtered lamb sizzled on an open fire. In the midst of this camp scene, which had once been universal across the steppe, men came to earth with sighs of relief. I rested among them, savoring every detail.
One of the eldest men turned to me and grinned.
“You realize that the ‘starving steppe’ isn’t really that hungry? There is good grass out here, and our animals always come back fat. It’s just that you have to know when and how.” His eyes were lit up, as if he were describing a feast.
I asked him to go on. He requested a pen and paper, so I handed him my diary, and in the light cast by the glow of the coals he drew a basic map.
“Every winter we live in the Moiynkum Desert. The soil is sandy and soft, there is little snow, and it is much warmer than other places.” He sketched an east-west-running stretch of land that lay between the westerly flowing Chu River in the north and the Karatau Mountains in the south.
“Then just before the ticks come to life in the spring we pack up and leave. If we stay too late, the animals suffer from the ticks, and the grass won’t have time to recover for the next winter. Our next camp is here, on the northern banks of the Chu River. As you can see, there are reeds to be eaten on the riverbanks, and grass is beginning to grow. We will stay here until the lambs and kids have strengthened. But eventually this river runs dry in the summer and the pasture gets burned by the sun. In just a few weeks, the grass will be long enough in the Betpak Dala, so we can go there.”
At the peak of summer, the family would continue north nearly as far as the city of Zhezkazgan. There, in uplands that provided cooler weather and winds that kept the mosquitoes away, they would mingle with other nomad families who had migrated from other regions. Timing the return south was crucial—too late and there was the risk of getting trapped by blizzards, too early and the winter pastures would not sustain the herds until spring. By the time they reached the Moiynkum Desert for winter they would have completed a round trip of around 600 km.
The man finished his sketch. “This is my land, and that of my ancestors, the Naiman tribe, and we have camped in the same places for generations,” he said. The completed map was an oval shape running from north to south bordered by the traditional lands of other tribes who had their own migratory routes. At the northern and southern ends the winter and summer stopping places overlapped with those of their neighbors. It was here families had the opportunity to socialize with other tribes and clans. Summer in particular was a time of festivity when horse races were arranged, feasts held, and courtship took place.
A piece of saksaul wood was rolled over, and a swarm of sparks spat into the sky like bees disturbed from a hive.
There had been times on my journey when it was tempting to imagine Kazakhstan as one great big swath of steppe and the nomads as living somewhat free-wandering, isolated lives. Now, however, I began to picture a sophisticated map of traditional grazing lands, stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Altai, the Kyzylkum Desert to Siberia. Each had clearly been home to generations of nomads, who, like this family’s ancestors, had developed a unique migratory pattern according to the local ecology and who were connected to other groups by adjoining camps.
There was no official map, of course, and in the near absence of nomads in present times I must have unwittingly crossed many boundaries during my journey to date. But Kazakhs had never relied on fences or maps. Instead they had known their territory, history, and likewise their identity through detailed knowledge of ancestry, known as shezire.
I was already familiar with one important element of shezire—that before choosing a marriage partner it was a requirement to know the details of seven generations of the paternal line, for it was taboo to marry anyone within those lines. This information had been passed on through the centuries via epic poems that wove together a riddle of names, stories of land, and important historical events.4 In the present day, as I witnessed in many Kazakh homes, it had survived in the form of family tree diagrams.
Also at the core of shezire was knowledge of clan, tribe, and juz (union of tribes)—three circles of allegiance that I had always found somewhat difficult to understand but which in the context of this family’s ancestral grazing land was easier to grasp.
This family was part of the Orta Juz—the horde that traditionally lives in the north and east of Kazakhstan.5 Within the Orta Juz they were Naimans—a tribe descended from the Naimans of Mongolia, whose defeat near Kharkhorin by Genghis Khan heralded the founding of the Mongol Empire. First and foremost, though, this man was of the Baganali clan.
“This here is Baganali land. We are the most honest clan. But see that woman over there?” the man said, pointing to a woman turning the frying lamb. “Don’t trust her, because she is Tama!” There was much laughter.
“And when you get into an aul, Timurbek, be sure t
o find out which clan lives there. Then when you arrive and they ask who you are, you should tell them that you are one of them. They will take you in like a brother … but when you get down to the Karatau Mountains, don’t tell them you are a Buzhban, because they are wild people!” There was more laughter.
For me, a foreigner, shezire would prove to be an icebreaker, just as the man advised, but had I been a Kazakh wandering the steppe, it would have been a much more integral part of greeting strangers. By asking, “What clan do you come from?” even today two Kazakhs can quickly gauge one another’s geographical homeland, common ancestors, enemies, and living relations. It was becoming clear to me that shezire was much like a passport and a map combined, allowing people to understand who they were, the land to which they belonged, and even whom they could marry.
Tigon crept closer to the fire and sat straight-backed, licking his chops, his paws shifting restlessly. He sensed, as did I, that the lamb was almost ready to eat.
I had all but become absorbed by the man’s story, but as hunger lifted my eyes beyond the glow of the fire, the distant lights of Ulanbel were a reminder that in a nation where nomadic life had been the norm for thousands of years, this family found themselves on the periphery of society.6
One of the men, who had been listening to the discussion, leaned in and said, “Life here was much better before this capitalism came! Back in those times we were all out herding. I used to be in charge of more than ten thousand animals! We had reliable wells, and everyone was employed, not like today. There were whole auls of yurts on the Betpak Dala until that idiot Gorbachev came along.”
Until now I had overlooked the fact that arid land such as this—unsuitable for conventional farming or cultivation—had been grazed by animals from Soviet stock-breeding collectives, following the same migratory routes as their predecessors. Wells and concrete feeding troughs had been maintained every 20 km, even through the “starving steppe.” In this way, Soviet doctrine had married successfully in part with traditional knowledge.