Tim & Tigon, page 20
When evening came we had been moving for almost ten hours, and we were all feeling a little frayed. Grigori and Yuri had begun to bicker.
After pitching camp, I climbed a peak just in time to see the mist fall away, revealing our first full view of the Chorna Gora ridge. Like the twisted torso of a serpent, it stretched ahead, joining a series of peaks. Above it all towered the distant dome of Hoverla.
In the morning we were back on the ridge. Tigon spent most of the time scouring the slopes, appearing from time to time poised over great precipices of ice and rock. More than once he disappeared, and I was sure, as I had been so many times before, that he was gone forever.
Just after lunch the ridge narrowed to a razorback where one slip on steep rock or snow would send the entire caravan tumbling.
I led the way with Taskonir, watching as he nervously inched his way forward. His hooves scraped and slipped across the broad faces of the rocks. The last 10 metres were the most delicate, as we navigated our way down a ledge to a small flat rock. Taskonir studied the way ahead, then came down in a controlled slide, coming safely to rest at my feet.
Ogonyok was less elegant. He stood on the point of a rock with his front legs together, teetering over the edge, then scraped and slipped his way down, miraculously landing on all fours at the bottom. Kok followed in similar fashion.
The next operation was to get the horses up over the ridge to the far side, where it was rocky but free of snow. This took a couple of hours, and Yuri became impatient, shouting, ‘Those Mongols certainly didn’t come over this way, did they?’
Yuri and Grigori’s bickering became worse as we continued. In the end Yuri strode out ahead, refusing to listen to Grigori, and made his way straight up to the summit of a peak. An hour later we were staring down a face of steep, jagged rocks. Grigori had had enough. ‘I am going home! I warned you, Yuri! My body can’t take any wasted effort!’
By the time we retreated, the sky had turned dark and the heavens opened. Although Grigori and I shrank into our raincoats, Yuri came to life: ‘We will not get through now! We will have to cut our way through these bushes! People have become lost and died here!’
The rain went on for two or three hours. I gave up waiting for it to stop and erected my tent. Tigon followed me inside and we went to bed too exhausted to cook a proper meal.
Come morning, the tension between Yuri and Grigori had gone, and it became clear that the struggle of the journey across the Chorna Gora was also over. We found an easy path around the ridge, and later passed below the mist-shrouded summit of Hoverla.
At the first opportunity Grigori headed down a shortcut to the nearest village. The following day Yuri hitched a ride into the nearest town, and had gone by the time I arrived.
One last challenge lay ahead of me before the mountains promised to drop away to the gentler slopes on the edge of the Hungarian plain: the crossing of a ridge known as Svidovets.
After restocking with supplies I began climbing once more. The summer heat was cranking up and it was a relief to return to the polonina, where the air was thinner and cooler.
On the second day we reached the Svidovets ridge, where rocky slopes gave way to green open meadows. Up here wiry men with the same jerky, bandy gait of their sheep sometimes stood in our way, resting on twisted old walking staffs. Their giant leathery hands looked too hardened to have any feeling.
On the evening of the second day we struck camp at a summer station known as Staryi Polonina. We had planned to continue at first light, but by dinner Tigon was looking seriously ill. Curled up on a horse blanket, he refused to stand or eat. His condition had been getting worse for a couple of days. I suspected it was due to some raw pig lungs I had fed him. For the next couple of days I rested Tigon and set the horses free to graze.
The break was an opportunity to learn about the life of the polonina we had heard so much about.
Staryi Polonina was separated into two parts: one for cow herding and another for sheep. I came to know the latter best. It was primarily run by two lanky seventeen-year-old boys, Bugdan and Vasil. Apart from guarding and grazing sheep, their job was to milk all four hundred animals three times a day – twice in daylight hours, and once at four am. They carried the milk to a cooking hut where it was boiled and churned, the curds and whey separated, and cheese hung up to drain.
The boys had been coming to the polonina as long as they could remember. Vasil, the most striking, had long narrow limbs and wore black jeans that fell straight as timber planks down his bony legs. His childlike body seemed out of place with the aged look of his face. He smoked regularly, and once I noticed him fiddling with a cigarette while he was milking a sheep. He twitched it up and down until it fell into the pail of milk. He dipped his hand in, put the cigarette back in his mouth, winked at me, and continued.
After the evening milking session, I joined the boys for a meal of porridge and sour cream, washed down with homemade wine. Their camp featured an old dead tree, the branches of which had been turned into a rack for hanging utensils. Pots, pans, sifters, stirrers, ladles and many other items shone a ghostly silver against the sky.
When the stars came out, Vasil pointed across the valley to a distant polonina where a fire lit up the night. ‘Over there they have bears. That’s why they need to keep the fire burning,’ he said in a deep husky voice.
‘And what about here?’ I asked.
‘Here? Wolves are a regular audience!’ he chuckled. ‘But we aren’t afraid of wolves and bears. And this work is a holiday compared to winter, when we work with horses hauling logs through the forest.’
As the blanket of cool air dropped and the slopes turned black, Vasil and Bugdan fired up stoves in cubicle-like huts where they barely had enough room to lie down. The sheep settled, and as all fell quiet the huts seemed to shrink until they were nothing more than specks, as lonely as the stars.
I woke at one am and listened from the comfort of my sleeping bag as dogs barked, my horses whinnied and the sheep rose to flee. Come morning I learnt that wolves had emerged from the forest edge. The boys had been up all night.
The responsibility carried by Bugdan and Vasil left a deep impression on me. I couldn’t help reflecting that the traditions of an entire people also weighed on these boys’ narrow shoulders. In Ukraine, the people of the Carpathians were renowned as poor, and for every Hutsul boy like Bugdan and Vasil, there were probably ten who had left to try their luck in the cities.
With Tigon back to health I set off again, and a day and a half later reached the highest point of the Svidovets. On the way a hailstorm hit us and the mist closed in, stealing away the view. I dismounted and led the horses along a narrow ridge, watching as the rain came in waves.
Late in the afternoon the wind dropped and the mist began to sink. Just as the sun angled down into our eyes there came an apparition – fifty horses rising through the mist and coming to a standstill right before us. After some time a horse stepped nervously forward with its head up and nostrils flaring. It seemed to be readying to strike, but then nibbled gently on Ogonyok’s mane instead. Pressing on, the herd followed in a symphony of whinnies, snorts and the rhythmic beat of hooves. Their coarse, split manes, large heads and thick short necks were all signs of their Mongolian origins. Tigon strode out as if he were the proud leader, and when the herd lost interest and stole away at a gallop, he pretended he had bravely chased them away, shooting an aggressive bark in their direction.
We walked on until the sky turned pink, then called it a day. I sat in a small meadow admiring the horses as they rolled about the luscious green. Tigon came sprinting when he heard the ritual bang of my cooking pot, and we shared, as always, a slice of pig fat before putting on dinner to cook. All day I had been overwhelmed by the sense of freedom. Up here, away from roads and fences, it occurred to me that because my horses were free, they had nowhere to run. We had everything we needed – fresh air, water, open space, and an abundance of grass. In these circumstances it didn’t make sense to tie a dog up or fence a horse in.
I filmed the sun as it slid below the horizon. The mist had pooled deep below, and it was clear we had nearly reached the end of the ridge. Ahead of us it twisted and fell into a deep river valley.
If I’d seen terrain like this three years earlier, I might have been too terrified to even begin my journey. As a scared, novice horseman, all I would have seen was the potential for disaster. I had always known that the Carpathians were one of the obstacles that kept me from reaching Hungary – or worse. But now that I had reached these mountains, I realised that the journey along the way, with all its unexpected challenges, had equipped me with the knowledge and skills I needed. I decided that in the future I would not worry about those things that I thought might bring me down. It was obvious that the journey itself would prepare me.
19
End of the World
In the winter of early 1241 the Mongol army were a long way from home. Having recently conquered Russia, they had crossed the Carpathian Mountains and were poised to invade central and Eastern Europe. Although Genghis Khan himself had died more than ten years earlier, his empire, under the leadership of one of his sons, Ogodei, would soon stretch from the Pacific Ocean to the Alps in Austria, from the tropics to the Arctic, making it the largest continuous land empire that the world has ever seen.
Poland was first to experience the Mongol wrath. Galloping in, the Mongols rained arrows from afar and used smoke, false retreats and other tricks to disorient their enemy. The European knights’ armour offered some protection, but proved heavy and cumbersome when faced with the speed and agility of the Mongols. Before long the Mongols had defeated a thirty-thousand-strong army. As evidence of the defeat, nine large sacks of ears were infamously collected and sent to the Mongol war general, Subodei.
In the scheme of things, the Polish invasion was just a distraction. Foremost in their sights was Hungary – it was the best place from which to push further into Europe, and there were open grasslands that could easily support the grazing of their horses.
The Mongols were not the first nomad empire to attempt to conquer this land. Even the Hungarians were the descendants of nomads known as Magyars, who had travelled by horse from somewhere on the steppe in Asia and founded the nation of Hungary in 896. But former nomads or not, the Mongols saw no reason to spare the Hungarians.
The Mongolians encircled the Hungarian army and used catapults to send burning tar down on the soldiers. They then created a gap in their encirclement, encouraging the soldiers to escape and triggering a mass retreat. The Mongols closed in on these soldiers and cut them down. The killing is believed to have gone on for two days, during which time around sixty-five thousand Hungarian soldiers were put to death. In the weeks and months that followed, it is believed that half of Hungary’s population was wiped out.
The following winter, the Mongols crossed the frozen Danube River and carried on into Austria. Nothing, it seemed, could hold the Mongols back from moving deep into Western Europe. And yet, there was. In March 1242 the Mongols got word that Ogodei had died. They began to withdraw east for the election of a new leader, reaching their homeland in 1243. Although the Mongol Empire would hold together for another century, the Mongols would never return to Hungary, nor realise their goal of dominating central and Western Europe.
My own plans were not of the conquest variety, and certainly I had no desire to collect ears as trophies. But what led me to Hungary was the same thing that had drawn nomads since the dawn of time: the westernmost stretches of the Great Eurasian Steppe. The wide-open Hungarian puszta, as steppe is known in Hungarian, suited a nomadic life similar to that of Mongolia. Beyond the Danube to the west, however, open plains succumbed to fences, crops, mountains and forests, and a much wetter climate. This region had long favoured settled society and was no place for a nomad. Hungary therefore signalled the end of the Eurasian Steppe, the end of the world for horseback nomads . . . and, of course, the end of my journey.
Given the devastation wreaked on Hungary by Mongols, someone like me, arriving in the spirit of those nomads, might not expect a particularly warm reception. But the atmosphere on the Hungarian-Ukrainian border was anything but unwelcoming.
Inside the veterinary control building on the Hungarian side of the border, János Lóska was excited. János had ridden all his life, was a horse breeder and had once been part of the national horse eventing team. For months I had been corresponding with him by email, and he had pledged to do all he could to help get my horses across the border.
Standing over the veterinarians as they inspected my animals, János now urged them on with a look of determination. When the last of the documents was stamped, and Tigon had been scanned for his newly installed microchip (he was now officially a citizen of Ukraine), János grabbed my sweaty arm with an iron grip and whispered in hushed English: ‘Nothing can stop us now! Nothing!’
We celebrated with hugs, handshakes and whoops of delight, and I rode the horses to the nearby town of Tuzsér, where they were taken in by a family. János then drove Tigon and me to his home. I clung to Tigon in the back seat, determined to fight off sleep so I wouldn’t miss a single waking moment. At one stage we stopped for fuel, and I stumbled into the convenience store and picked up a hot dog. The bright lights, white walls and floor, and plastic-sealed ‘food on the go’ were a novelty and, in that moment, an unexpected measure of how far I had come.
In the morning János spread out a map of Hungary to plot my route. Tigon, typically, planted his paws on the middle of it, demanding a pat. János suggested that I was to travel southwest across the great plain of Hungary, known as Hortobágy, then roughly along the meandering banks of the Tisza River to the centre of the country before turning west to the Danube. ‘I have ridden every corner of this country by horse, and I can ensure that you will never have to ride on a road if you follow my directions,’ he said proudly.
János’s vision was of my caravan being escorted and hosted by Hungarian horsemen and women along a network of tracks and trails and, where possible, cross-country. He had friends ready to take me in and guide me through, and planned to ride with me whenever he could.
János was particularly excited about the place he had chosen for my finale: ‘There is only one choice, if you really want to make it the Hungarian way, and that is Opusztaszer. There I will really be able to make you a hero!’ he exclaimed.
The first of my hosts in Hungary was a man very familiar with Opusztaszer. I met Tamas Petrosko half a day’s ride from Tuzsér. In his sixties, Tamas had slightly sunken shoulders and a hard, toughened frame rounded out by a belly. He rode towards me in a saddle draped with a sheepskin which, much to Tigon’s wonderment, had the tail of the sheep still attached.
‘You come the Magyar way! I also ride this route!’ he said in a patchwork of English and Russian, leaning over from his horse to give me a hug.
In 1997 Tamas had been part of a small group of Hungarians who carried out a 4200-kilometre journey in honour of the great migration of his ancestors. They had ridden from Siberia, through Russia and Ukraine before crossing through the Carpathians onto the Hungarian plain. The end of their journey had been celebrated with a ceremony in Opusztaszer, which, according to Tamas, was the ‘spiritual centre’ of the country. It was in this nondescript town 90 kilometres east of the Danube that the Magyars’ leader, Arpád, had officially founded the modern nation.
I spent several days with Tamas on a sweeping property that featured yurts, a Mongolian ovoo, and a shaman’s hut marked at the entrance by the skulls of a horse and a cow. Out in the field flocks of long-haired Hungarian sheep and a herd of horned Hungarian cattle grazed. It was Tamas’s dream to inspire young Hungarians to celebrate the spirit of their ancestors.
Unfortunately, my time with Tamas was marked by much more than learning about Hungarian nomad culture, when, one fateful night, Tigon vanished.
It was not uncommon for Tigon to disappear after dark, but when he hadn’t returned by morning I knew something was wrong. By day two without Tigon I was beside myself. I rode through the nearby villages asking if anyone had seen a ‘tall black dog with a white chest’, but was met with shrugs. My blood turned cold. Life without Tigon? And that is when I received the phone call from János . . .
‘Have you lost your dog?’ he asked. I held my breath.
‘. . . the family who you stayed with three days ago in Tuzser think they saw him in their backyard!’
Unbelievably, Tigon had managed to travel more than 40 kilometres back to Tuzser, and had even swum across the mighty Tizsa River. The only clue as to what had happened lay in a piece of wire that was still tightly bound around his neck. Tamas suspected that someone had stolen Tigon and tied him up by this wire, but that Tigon had somehow escaped and gone to the only place he could remember. Luckily Tigon was not a cat – he needed more than nine lives.
Fortunately, over the coming weeks in Hungary there would be no more dog stealing – or horse stealing for that matter – and in a land without mountains or scorching deserts, meeting people like Tamas became the focus of my journey.
Joining me from Tamas’s farm, for instance, was István Vismeg, a tall, burly high school physical education teacher with unkempt, shoulder-length black hair and a mischievous look in his eyes. In a wild two-day ride through backstreets, along forest trails, and across fields I learnt how proud he was of his nomad roots.
‘This is life!’ he would bellow, even as we cantered through the pouring rain. ‘I’m Hungarian and I’m not gonna live in chains!’
István took me to the historic town of Szabolcs and handed me over to my next host, a short, rotund man named Geyser. A self-proclaimed shaman, Geyser greeted me with a ceremony complete with drums and chanting in the centre of a thousand-year-old earthen fortress. I camped there and celebrated into the night with Geyser and István.
