On a pioneering trip to a remote corner of Mongolia, Mike Carter stays with a nomadic family who hunt with birds of prey
“There,” whispered Alpamas. I followed his finger but saw nothing. He launched a series of rocks. Twenty metres in front of us, something bolted: a manul, also known as Pallas’s cat, a rare and beautiful animal, stocky and flat-faced. The cat looked terrified but the rocks were the least of its problems. Suddenly, two giant, dark shapes appeared above, sweeping across the snow — golden eagles, with wingspans of two-metres or more, working together tracking the cat’s desperate zigzagging, inches off the ground. The eagles thrust forward their talons, each the size of a child’s finger, and the prey disappeared under a canopy of feathers. There was a shrill mewling protest, then silence.
I was with the Kazakh eagle hunters in the extreme west of Mongolia, one of the remotest places on earth, the far fringe of a country bigger than France, Germany and Spain combined. The Kazakhs are a nomadic people spread throughout not just Kazakhstan but a swathe of Central Asia. For more than 2,000 years they have lived a subsistence life based around their tavan hoshuu mal — or five-animal herds consisting of yak, goats, sheep, Bactrian camels and horses — and have trained, and hunted with, golden eagles. Until very recently, eagle-hunting apart, this traditional life was typical for the majority of people right across the Mongolian steppe. But things in Mongolia are changing, and fast.