We journeyed back to the capital today, with a few stops along the way. The first was to view the Burana Tower, an eleventh century monument, restored by the Soviets in the 1950’s.
Next stop was to see a demonstration of some of the nomadic games carried out on horseback by local villagers. It was done in a very muddy field. One was “horse wrestling” (two riders try and wrestle each other off the horse), another was snatching up small coloured bags from the ground while the horse is moving at a gallop (the more bags grabbed at once the better) and throwing them into the air. Lots of cheers and encouragement was given!!! And lastly a game of “Kok-Boru” (horse polo), but this version used a headless, limbless goat, instead of a ball (I kid you not). They try and wrestle the goat from each other, before galloping down the field to score into the opposing team’s goal. The winners get to take the goat back to their village for dinner!
Afterwards we continued on and checked into The Plaza Hotel again, this time our room was on the 9th floor overlooking the stadium again, and we’d been upgraded to a suite. There was a local team game that night, and though not as noisy as the previous international game, we could see about 90% of the pitch from our room (there were also not as many supporters). The last nights dinner was at a local restaurant with a four piece band playing. It wasn’t a late night, most of us were up at five a.m. for our short journey to the airport.
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