♘امیرحسین♞
♘ مدیریت انجمن اسب ایران ♞
Charles Moore takes a horseback tour of Turkmenistan, a country where civic pomp goes hand in hand with ancient equestrian tradition.
Our story begins, oddly, with John Major. His was not a romantic premiership, but one rather dashing thing happened to him. He went to Turkmenistan, and was given a horse. The gift - bestowed by the country's then President Saparmurat Niyazov in 1993 - was not any old horse, but an Ahal Tekke, Turkmenistan's unique breed which is supposed to descend from Alexander the Great's mount, Bucephalus.
The Ahal Tekke are famous, among other things, for the metallic sheen of their coat. Major was presented with Maksat (which means target), a silver-coated 15-hand stallion, whose value was about £30,000.
Major is no horseman and did not evince much enthusiasm for the beast. Diplomatic ill-feeling began to grow as Maksat stood about in his stable waiting to travel. But at last he came. He was sent to train with the Household Cavalry at Melton Mowbray, but was found to be too high-spirited for ceremonial duties and too slight for an English cavalryman's proportions. He retired to a stud-farm in Wales, where he lives to this day.
It was at this point that Maksat came to the attention of Bridget Tempest, a professional artist and horse-lover, who painted him in tack borrowed from the Queen.
Two women who admired the painting invited Bridget to accompany them to Turkmenistan and ride the Ahal Tekke.
Since then, Bridget has become the main cultural ambassador between the two countries, tirelessly organising exhibitions, concerts and the exchange of artistic skills. She has even drawn the picture of the Ahal Tekke which appears on Turkmen banknotes.
She has ridden across the Karakum desert, which makes up 80 per cent of Turkmenistan, and the mountains which compose the southern border with Iran. She loves the place, the people and the horses, and they seem to love her.
Bridget is an old friend of ours, and when we heard that she was going to Turkmenistan again, we and three friends took the chance to join her.
We flew into Ashgabat, the capital, at the end of April. It is a very unusual place. In 1948, the entire city was destroyed by an earthquake so ferocious that, Turkmens say, more than 90 per cent of the population died. One who survived, alone of his family, was Niyazov, then a boy of eight.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Turkmenistan became a fully independent country, and Niyazov its first president. He determined to create a new national pride, and he renamed himself Turkmenbashi, the father of the Turkmens. The Ahal Tekke, disregarded by the Russians, who preferred tractors, became one of the country's symbols. And the centre of Ashgabat became a vast field for grandiose building.
Using the revenue which comes from Turkmenistan's enormous supplies of natural gas, Turkmenbashi created something that resembles a great imperial capital on a computer game.
Like the old Soviet Intourist, Turkmenistan insists on providing you with a local guide, but in our case this was a great advantage. We were guided by Atta, a young Turkmen with such pure, high-quality English that he had clearly never been to England. We strolled round the huge, white-marbled spaces with their endlessly watered formal gardens. The streets are wide, the shops few and far between, and there seem often to be more trees than people about.
Ashgabat stands at the edge of the desert just below the Kopet Dagh mountains and climbs slightly uphill in their direction. At the mountain end of the city stands the Independence Monument, a vast column 91 metres (300ft) high, to note the year of independence. It is guarded by real soldiers, but also by colossal statues of Turkmen warriors. Beneath their implacable gaze, a touching wedding party moved gravely across the marble.
It is the custom in Turkmenistan for the bride to be so decorated with silver that she can move only with difficulty, her face completely covered with an ornate headdress. For 40 days after her wedding day, she must wear this rig all the time in public, escorted by her new family.
We saw the bride, with her husband on her arm, advancing slowly towards their wedding car in this outfit. In front of them, men danced backwards, clapping and waving handkerchiefs in time to music.
Then we ascended the famed Arch of Neutrality, a sort of tripod topped by a golden statue of Turkmenbashi which rotates at all times of day so that the leader always greets the sun. From it, you can see the monument to the earthquake.
A dark bronze ox carries the world on its horns (a traditional Turkmen belief), but the world is cracking open because of the tremor. Threatened by the crack, a desperate woman, also in dark bronze, holds aloft a golden child who sits on top of the globe. That is the young Turkmenbashi.
Leaving the city, we stopped at the president's birthplace and inspected the mausoleum in which his body was placed after he died in December last year. Beside it is an absolutely enormous mosque, also erected by the late president.
On the inside of its dome are inscribed words of the Koran, in Turkmen (almost heretical in a religion that insists that Arabic is the only proper language for holy writ), and beneath them are quotations from Turkmenbashi's own work, the Ruhnama, a collection of homespun wisdom which is available everywhere.
The effect is slightly as if St Paul's Cathedral contained texts from St John's Gospel mixed in with extracts from the memoirs of Margaret Thatcher.
After such pomp, the desert is a contrast. We soon reached the stud farm of Khemra Gulmedov, who puts visitors up in a sort of motel, or in yurts, the local round tent. Khemra's wife is the Minister for Carpets. He produced six Ahal Tekke mares for a brief get-to-know-you session before our long ride began the following morning.
My saddle was Turkish, ie uncomfortable and offering almost as little to cling on to as a racing saddle. The boy who helped tighten my girth did so with his teeth.
The mares are very pretty. They are about 15 hands high, and much tougher than they look. They have long necks, small heads, a frame so slight that you feel you must fall off at once, and a beautifully easy motion.
But they are not so easy to stop. On our practice run to show us the way, a boy accompanied us on a stallion so crazed by the sight of the mares that the evidence of his excitement swung dramatically from side to side. Whenever he got close to us, he reared up.
In the end, we pushed ahead of the sex maniac on the dusty tracks and soon found that, with their snaffles and no martingales or drop nosebands, the mares just took off and there wasn't much you could do about it.
Our only comfort was the camel-hair collar which is put round each horse's neck to ward off the evil eye. No one fell off.
The next morning, we set off through the Karakum desert. There is 600 miles of the stuff before you reach Bokhara, but we were attempting only 20. In the heat of the summer, the journey would be oppressive, and boring to look at, because everything dries up, but in April and early May the hard sand is greened up.
Hoopoes and rollers are plentiful, and there is a variety of hawks and buzzards. Everywhere you look on the ground, dung-beetles are pushing their enormous loads about. The poisonous snakes are still hibernating.
The going was good, too good really for the nervous rider since there was little excuse for not galloping. Khemra's stable lads were ahead of us and cooked up a proper picnic for lunch while we sat on carpets, sheltered from the rain which had now come on.
At evening, we reached a tiny village where adorable baby camels stood in a special pen of their own, guarded from the outside by their mothers. Our pen, because the cold prevented us sleeping under the stars, was the floor of the schoolhouse. We were soon joined by a huge audience of village children.
They were very good-looking and quietly dignified. T he light-brown, black-haired girls were all in their long, close-fitting dresses, many of the boys in brimless caps. They stared at us solemnly, and then broke into smiles as we gave them the tiny balls and plastic jewels we had brought with us. They were even pleased with a brochure about the House of Commons, presented by one of our party, who is an MP.
It would be idle to pretend that we passed an enjoyable night. The MP, who had an appalling sore throat, was given a "cure" by Khemra - a large glass of vodka with a whole chilli crushed up in it. As a result, he could at first not speak and later could not breathe. All night long, he coughed and hawked and woke from time to time with a sudden, choking start.
And as I lay, my boiling stomach told me that something local had disagreed with me. There was no electricity, no running water and no lavatories, so I hung on, sleepless, until the first streaks of dawn, and then paid what proved to be the first of all too many visits to the sand-dunes beyond the village. The only comfort was the utter stillness, and the huge prospect of the mountains.
Other people's illnesses are not interesting, so I shall say no more except that we reached base-camp with some difficulty the following day. The day after that, we contented ourselves (my wife had the same problem) with a walk in the mountains, full of poppies and glorious gentians, while the others rode.
Our visit coincided with the festival day of the horse, decreed by Turkmenbashi. This involves a race-meeting at the Ashgabat hippodrome, which is almost as grand as Ascot, and with the definite advantage of having no queues and free entry. We went.
The grand government officials sit in their sober suiting in the Turkmen equivalent of the Royal Enclosure, surrounded by bottles of Fanta and Coke. Below them, the noble horses race on a dirt-track and trick riders, balancing boys on their heads or lying at right angles to their steeds as they gallop, entertain the crowd.
We were particularly delighted with the prizes, all laid out for admiration. They included fridges and televisions and large radios still in their cardboard boxes. The winner of the big race got a new Lada car, in which he solemnly drove away. Though why anyone would prefer such transport to a golden Ahal Tekke, I cannot think.
All foreign visitors to Turkmenistan have to make their travel arrangements through travel agents recognised by the Turkmenistan government; getting a letter of invitation and visa depends on this.
Charles Moore flew with Turkmenistan Airlines, which flies to Ashgabat direct from London and Birmingham; returns from about £490, with the option to fly on to Amritsar or Delhi; his flights were booked by Balu Travel in Birmingham (0121 554 0646; speak to Jaz).
All his ground travel and accommodation, including the riding expedition, was organised by Ayan Travel in Ashgabat (00993 12 352914 or 350797, info@ayan-travel.com, www.ayan-travel.com). The cost of a bespoke tour depends on the number in the party as well as the scope of the itinerary, but expect a week to start at around £400 per person.
In Ashgabat, he stayed at the Hotel Nissa, a spacious and reasonable four-star hotel with good Italian food; double b & b US$65.
He visited the Tolcuchka market near Ashgabat, which takes place on Sunday and Thursday mornings.
There is racing at the Hippodrome on Sundays from March until the end of May.
Stantours (0049 12120 241382, www.stantours.com, info@stantours.com), based in Kazakhstan, can organise travel around all the 'Stans.
Turkish Airlines (020 7766 9300, www.thy.com) serves most of Central Asia from Istanbul; returns from London to Ashgabat via Istanbul from £593.
Turkmen basics
* The best times to visit Turkmenistan are spring and autumn. Avoid late June, July and August, when temperatures rise to 40C or more.
* The best guidebook is Turkmenistan by Paul Brummell (Bradt, £14.99)
* An exhibition to showcase Turkmen culture, Beyond the Caspian Sea: Art and Treasures from Turkmenistan, will be at Asia House (63 New Cavendish Street, London W1, 020 7307 5454, www.asiahouse.org) on September 27 and 28, with a concert of traditional music on the Friday evening (exhibition free, concert £10). The show moves to the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, North Yorkshire (01423 503340) on October 12 and continues to January 2008.
Our story begins, oddly, with John Major. His was not a romantic premiership, but one rather dashing thing happened to him. He went to Turkmenistan, and was given a horse. The gift - bestowed by the country's then President Saparmurat Niyazov in 1993 - was not any old horse, but an Ahal Tekke, Turkmenistan's unique breed which is supposed to descend from Alexander the Great's mount, Bucephalus.
The Ahal Tekke are famous, among other things, for the metallic sheen of their coat. Major was presented with Maksat (which means target), a silver-coated 15-hand stallion, whose value was about £30,000.
Major is no horseman and did not evince much enthusiasm for the beast. Diplomatic ill-feeling began to grow as Maksat stood about in his stable waiting to travel. But at last he came. He was sent to train with the Household Cavalry at Melton Mowbray, but was found to be too high-spirited for ceremonial duties and too slight for an English cavalryman's proportions. He retired to a stud-farm in Wales, where he lives to this day.
It was at this point that Maksat came to the attention of Bridget Tempest, a professional artist and horse-lover, who painted him in tack borrowed from the Queen.
Two women who admired the painting invited Bridget to accompany them to Turkmenistan and ride the Ahal Tekke.
Since then, Bridget has become the main cultural ambassador between the two countries, tirelessly organising exhibitions, concerts and the exchange of artistic skills. She has even drawn the picture of the Ahal Tekke which appears on Turkmen banknotes.
She has ridden across the Karakum desert, which makes up 80 per cent of Turkmenistan, and the mountains which compose the southern border with Iran. She loves the place, the people and the horses, and they seem to love her.
Bridget is an old friend of ours, and when we heard that she was going to Turkmenistan again, we and three friends took the chance to join her.
We flew into Ashgabat, the capital, at the end of April. It is a very unusual place. In 1948, the entire city was destroyed by an earthquake so ferocious that, Turkmens say, more than 90 per cent of the population died. One who survived, alone of his family, was Niyazov, then a boy of eight.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Turkmenistan became a fully independent country, and Niyazov its first president. He determined to create a new national pride, and he renamed himself Turkmenbashi, the father of the Turkmens. The Ahal Tekke, disregarded by the Russians, who preferred tractors, became one of the country's symbols. And the centre of Ashgabat became a vast field for grandiose building.
Using the revenue which comes from Turkmenistan's enormous supplies of natural gas, Turkmenbashi created something that resembles a great imperial capital on a computer game.
Like the old Soviet Intourist, Turkmenistan insists on providing you with a local guide, but in our case this was a great advantage. We were guided by Atta, a young Turkmen with such pure, high-quality English that he had clearly never been to England. We strolled round the huge, white-marbled spaces with their endlessly watered formal gardens. The streets are wide, the shops few and far between, and there seem often to be more trees than people about.
Ashgabat stands at the edge of the desert just below the Kopet Dagh mountains and climbs slightly uphill in their direction. At the mountain end of the city stands the Independence Monument, a vast column 91 metres (300ft) high, to note the year of independence. It is guarded by real soldiers, but also by colossal statues of Turkmen warriors. Beneath their implacable gaze, a touching wedding party moved gravely across the marble.
It is the custom in Turkmenistan for the bride to be so decorated with silver that she can move only with difficulty, her face completely covered with an ornate headdress. For 40 days after her wedding day, she must wear this rig all the time in public, escorted by her new family.
We saw the bride, with her husband on her arm, advancing slowly towards their wedding car in this outfit. In front of them, men danced backwards, clapping and waving handkerchiefs in time to music.
Then we ascended the famed Arch of Neutrality, a sort of tripod topped by a golden statue of Turkmenbashi which rotates at all times of day so that the leader always greets the sun. From it, you can see the monument to the earthquake.
A dark bronze ox carries the world on its horns (a traditional Turkmen belief), but the world is cracking open because of the tremor. Threatened by the crack, a desperate woman, also in dark bronze, holds aloft a golden child who sits on top of the globe. That is the young Turkmenbashi.
Leaving the city, we stopped at the president's birthplace and inspected the mausoleum in which his body was placed after he died in December last year. Beside it is an absolutely enormous mosque, also erected by the late president.
On the inside of its dome are inscribed words of the Koran, in Turkmen (almost heretical in a religion that insists that Arabic is the only proper language for holy writ), and beneath them are quotations from Turkmenbashi's own work, the Ruhnama, a collection of homespun wisdom which is available everywhere.
The effect is slightly as if St Paul's Cathedral contained texts from St John's Gospel mixed in with extracts from the memoirs of Margaret Thatcher.
After such pomp, the desert is a contrast. We soon reached the stud farm of Khemra Gulmedov, who puts visitors up in a sort of motel, or in yurts, the local round tent. Khemra's wife is the Minister for Carpets. He produced six Ahal Tekke mares for a brief get-to-know-you session before our long ride began the following morning.
My saddle was Turkish, ie uncomfortable and offering almost as little to cling on to as a racing saddle. The boy who helped tighten my girth did so with his teeth.
The mares are very pretty. They are about 15 hands high, and much tougher than they look. They have long necks, small heads, a frame so slight that you feel you must fall off at once, and a beautifully easy motion.
But they are not so easy to stop. On our practice run to show us the way, a boy accompanied us on a stallion so crazed by the sight of the mares that the evidence of his excitement swung dramatically from side to side. Whenever he got close to us, he reared up.
In the end, we pushed ahead of the sex maniac on the dusty tracks and soon found that, with their snaffles and no martingales or drop nosebands, the mares just took off and there wasn't much you could do about it.
Our only comfort was the camel-hair collar which is put round each horse's neck to ward off the evil eye. No one fell off.
The next morning, we set off through the Karakum desert. There is 600 miles of the stuff before you reach Bokhara, but we were attempting only 20. In the heat of the summer, the journey would be oppressive, and boring to look at, because everything dries up, but in April and early May the hard sand is greened up.
Hoopoes and rollers are plentiful, and there is a variety of hawks and buzzards. Everywhere you look on the ground, dung-beetles are pushing their enormous loads about. The poisonous snakes are still hibernating.
The going was good, too good really for the nervous rider since there was little excuse for not galloping. Khemra's stable lads were ahead of us and cooked up a proper picnic for lunch while we sat on carpets, sheltered from the rain which had now come on.
At evening, we reached a tiny village where adorable baby camels stood in a special pen of their own, guarded from the outside by their mothers. Our pen, because the cold prevented us sleeping under the stars, was the floor of the schoolhouse. We were soon joined by a huge audience of village children.
They were very good-looking and quietly dignified. T he light-brown, black-haired girls were all in their long, close-fitting dresses, many of the boys in brimless caps. They stared at us solemnly, and then broke into smiles as we gave them the tiny balls and plastic jewels we had brought with us. They were even pleased with a brochure about the House of Commons, presented by one of our party, who is an MP.
It would be idle to pretend that we passed an enjoyable night. The MP, who had an appalling sore throat, was given a "cure" by Khemra - a large glass of vodka with a whole chilli crushed up in it. As a result, he could at first not speak and later could not breathe. All night long, he coughed and hawked and woke from time to time with a sudden, choking start.
And as I lay, my boiling stomach told me that something local had disagreed with me. There was no electricity, no running water and no lavatories, so I hung on, sleepless, until the first streaks of dawn, and then paid what proved to be the first of all too many visits to the sand-dunes beyond the village. The only comfort was the utter stillness, and the huge prospect of the mountains.
Other people's illnesses are not interesting, so I shall say no more except that we reached base-camp with some difficulty the following day. The day after that, we contented ourselves (my wife had the same problem) with a walk in the mountains, full of poppies and glorious gentians, while the others rode.
Our visit coincided with the festival day of the horse, decreed by Turkmenbashi. This involves a race-meeting at the Ashgabat hippodrome, which is almost as grand as Ascot, and with the definite advantage of having no queues and free entry. We went.
The grand government officials sit in their sober suiting in the Turkmen equivalent of the Royal Enclosure, surrounded by bottles of Fanta and Coke. Below them, the noble horses race on a dirt-track and trick riders, balancing boys on their heads or lying at right angles to their steeds as they gallop, entertain the crowd.
We were particularly delighted with the prizes, all laid out for admiration. They included fridges and televisions and large radios still in their cardboard boxes. The winner of the big race got a new Lada car, in which he solemnly drove away. Though why anyone would prefer such transport to a golden Ahal Tekke, I cannot think.
All foreign visitors to Turkmenistan have to make their travel arrangements through travel agents recognised by the Turkmenistan government; getting a letter of invitation and visa depends on this.
Charles Moore flew with Turkmenistan Airlines, which flies to Ashgabat direct from London and Birmingham; returns from about £490, with the option to fly on to Amritsar or Delhi; his flights were booked by Balu Travel in Birmingham (0121 554 0646; speak to Jaz).
All his ground travel and accommodation, including the riding expedition, was organised by Ayan Travel in Ashgabat (00993 12 352914 or 350797, info@ayan-travel.com, www.ayan-travel.com). The cost of a bespoke tour depends on the number in the party as well as the scope of the itinerary, but expect a week to start at around £400 per person.
In Ashgabat, he stayed at the Hotel Nissa, a spacious and reasonable four-star hotel with good Italian food; double b & b US$65.
He visited the Tolcuchka market near Ashgabat, which takes place on Sunday and Thursday mornings.
There is racing at the Hippodrome on Sundays from March until the end of May.
Stantours (0049 12120 241382, www.stantours.com, info@stantours.com), based in Kazakhstan, can organise travel around all the 'Stans.
Turkish Airlines (020 7766 9300, www.thy.com) serves most of Central Asia from Istanbul; returns from London to Ashgabat via Istanbul from £593.
Turkmen basics
* The best times to visit Turkmenistan are spring and autumn. Avoid late June, July and August, when temperatures rise to 40C or more.
* The best guidebook is Turkmenistan by Paul Brummell (Bradt, £14.99)
* An exhibition to showcase Turkmen culture, Beyond the Caspian Sea: Art and Treasures from Turkmenistan, will be at Asia House (63 New Cavendish Street, London W1, 020 7307 5454, www.asiahouse.org) on September 27 and 28, with a concert of traditional music on the Friday evening (exhibition free, concert £10). The show moves to the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, North Yorkshire (01423 503340) on October 12 and continues to January 2008.