aje: buzkashi: goat pulling

I've written about Buzkashi before, but it may serve us well to have a quick definition...

Buzkashi (booz-ka-shee): In Persian, "buz" means "goat". "Kashi" comes from the verb "to pull". Ergo, goat-pulling. Its basically a Central Asian rodeo.

On the late morning/early afternoon of Navrus I (Aaron) went to see another Buzkashi match (I went to my first one last year on Navrus). I've got a ridiculous number of photos here, but when you are documenting a sport that involves a hundred men on horses fighting over the headless carcass of a goat, I think its justified.

I'll start with a couple of shots showing where we watched from. We started off down at one end, where we made friends with the police and used our status as foreign guests to get some preferential treatment. The group photo was their idea. The foreigners wearing the police hats was mine...

Later on we moved down to the other end of the field and sat on top of a semi truck. This shot shows the boys on the next truck over...

This one gives you an idea of the size of the field and number of competitors...

I had a comment about this guy that Jen won't allow me to publish, but you may be able to figure out anyway. Instead I will tell you that the guys who do this seem like some pretty tough dudes...

You may remember from last year that the goal of the game is to pick up the carcass of a headless goat off of the ground from a moving horse and drop it into a designated area. Here you see the technique involved in the first step...

Sometimes this results in falls, and we saw horses and riders (like this guy) go crashing to the ground several times...

After they pick up the goat, its off to the races to get to the other end of the field...

During this part, other riders are trying to pry the goat away from the one who has it. Like the rest of the game, this can get pretty dirty, with guys smacking one another with their whips, or, like this guy, pulling on the other guy's reigns...

Although there seems to be some attempt to make some boundaries, it seemed that every few minutes the action would spillover to the crowd, where everyone who was able to move quickly got out of the way. Those old guys still sitting there would've needed a bit more warning to get moving...