Fancy this. An American NFL player riding a horse in the Memorial Stadium with a heavy carcass of a beheaded goat in one hand and a rein in the other, charged by a gang of ferocious Afghans on horseback with whips and knives in their hands. Perhaps a comedy scene in a flick, or Afghanistan’s answer to Operation Anaconda or another crazy sport in contention for the future Olympics?? Confused?
Welcome to the World of Buzkashi and Men with cojones (no doubts). This vicious ancient sport by the name of Buzkashi (which literally means goat grabbing) is one of the weird, bloody, barbaric and crazy sports I have seen (on TV yaar). And I seem to have liked it for all the good and the bad reasons after watching it sometime back on NatGeo. According to legends, Buzkashi was invented by Genghis Khan as a training routine for his hordes enabling them to gallop through enemy camps at high speeds snatching women (again fancy doing this to a 160+ pound woman hehe), live stocks and anything they could get their hands on to. Quite popular among the Hazaras, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz (A national sport in Kyrgyzstan), its as fierce and gross as bullfighting in Spain. I wonder how crazy humans can get trying to kill a bull stone dead in Bullfighting and now trying to kill each other over a dead animal carcass in Buzkashi..LOL
Game Play: The Game is usually played in a stadium or a huge open field with a dead animal carcass (goat, sheep or a calf beheaded and disembowled the previous day of the match and soaked in cold water for 24hrs to make it heavy and rigid, on occasions they even fill it with sand) in a white circle marked at the center or at the extreme ends of the field of play. The game is open to anyone on a horseback (strictly for males though) who dares to test his guts. There are 2 forms of the game, Tudubarai and Quarajai. In Tudubarai ,the main aim is to simply snatch the carcass in the circle fending off opposition and move in any direction until clear of the other players. In Quarajai, players need to carry the carcass across a marker at one end of the field and throw it into the scoring circle at the other end. Sounds easy? Well the best part is that there are no rules and all the players can carry a whip or a knife to fend off any opposition. Some smart-ass champ of Buzkashi [they call him Chapandaz and believe me he is 44 years old] has even trained his horse to bite off a piece of opponent meat. And another addition to this weird entertainment is an on field commentator on horse yelling in Pashto who could even give Tony Greig a run for his money.At one point I thought he was the referee officiating a game with no rules and sportsmanship spirit at all…hehe. The players and the fans in the crowd take the game as seriously as any other EPL player or fan. The winner is awarded a turban, rifle or a cash prize. The spirit with which the game is played is just ineffable, though not for the faint hearted. The Buzkashi Associations in Kyrgyzstan and other supporting countries are recommending the sport to be listed in Olympics! So don’t be surprised if you hear Afghanistan winning a gold medal somewhere in 2052 Olympics. For just the heck of it, Buzkashi is surely one of the “thousand things to see before you die”.
Welcome to the World of Buzkashi and Men with cojones (no doubts). This vicious ancient sport by the name of Buzkashi (which literally means goat grabbing) is one of the weird, bloody, barbaric and crazy sports I have seen (on TV yaar). And I seem to have liked it for all the good and the bad reasons after watching it sometime back on NatGeo. According to legends, Buzkashi was invented by Genghis Khan as a training routine for his hordes enabling them to gallop through enemy camps at high speeds snatching women (again fancy doing this to a 160+ pound woman hehe), live stocks and anything they could get their hands on to. Quite popular among the Hazaras, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz (A national sport in Kyrgyzstan), its as fierce and gross as bullfighting in Spain. I wonder how crazy humans can get trying to kill a bull stone dead in Bullfighting and now trying to kill each other over a dead animal carcass in Buzkashi..LOL
Game Play: The Game is usually played in a stadium or a huge open field with a dead animal carcass (goat, sheep or a calf beheaded and disembowled the previous day of the match and soaked in cold water for 24hrs to make it heavy and rigid, on occasions they even fill it with sand) in a white circle marked at the center or at the extreme ends of the field of play. The game is open to anyone on a horseback (strictly for males though) who dares to test his guts. There are 2 forms of the game, Tudubarai and Quarajai. In Tudubarai ,the main aim is to simply snatch the carcass in the circle fending off opposition and move in any direction until clear of the other players. In Quarajai, players need to carry the carcass across a marker at one end of the field and throw it into the scoring circle at the other end. Sounds easy? Well the best part is that there are no rules and all the players can carry a whip or a knife to fend off any opposition. Some smart-ass champ of Buzkashi [they call him Chapandaz and believe me he is 44 years old] has even trained his horse to bite off a piece of opponent meat. And another addition to this weird entertainment is an on field commentator on horse yelling in Pashto who could even give Tony Greig a run for his money.At one point I thought he was the referee officiating a game with no rules and sportsmanship spirit at all…hehe. The players and the fans in the crowd take the game as seriously as any other EPL player or fan. The winner is awarded a turban, rifle or a cash prize. The spirit with which the game is played is just ineffable, though not for the faint hearted. The Buzkashi Associations in Kyrgyzstan and other supporting countries are recommending the sport to be listed in Olympics! So don’t be surprised if you hear Afghanistan winning a gold medal somewhere in 2052 Olympics. For just the heck of it, Buzkashi is surely one of the “thousand things to see before you die”.
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