Bozkashi

I think it's safe to say bozkashi is the national sport, and my town has a glorious new field backing up to the river. It must be somehow related to polo, but actually polo and rugby and rodeo. A headless goat, boz, carcass serves as the ball. I couldn't just tell you the rules, but there's a scrummage for a while, driving the horses into a tight pack with lots of whipping, then someone breaks out with the goat and races their horse like mad to the other end of the field while the others chase them. There are men on horses, maybe 20 per side, but they fluidly enter and exit the huge field.

I was basically the only woman there, and there were 2000 or 3000 men. I had to cross the field at one point since my house is on the other side. My colleague who's my mother's age, walked me across, but he wanted to film as we went. At one point we crossed in front of the grand stands, so to speak, where at least 1,000 guys were sitting. The announcer had a microphone and said, "Hello Meester, honumaton (your wife) - veerdy good, veerdy, veerdy, good."


The finest detail in town, Olympic ring gates around the entire field which must be a half a mile perimeter


It's amazing what you can teach a horse to do


The two horses on the left have the goat carcass between them, you can actually sort of see it between the white horse's legs