Tim & Tigon by Tim Cope

Author:Tim Cope
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2019-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

13

Hoofsteps into Europe

For four months my journey had been all about summer in Kazakhstan. The vast sunburned land had taken its toll, but those long nights under the stars had also given me strength and a sense of confidence and calm that I thought was unbreakable. I was well past the halfway mark to the Danube, and about to exit Asia and enter the kinder weather conditions of Europe. I had visions of tracking along the edge of the Caspian Sea in a cool breeze, taking swims on sandy beaches, then effortlessly sailing into Russia and beyond. Surely the toughest part of the journey was behind me. Tigon and I were prepared for everything that lay ahead.

In reality, I would never see the Caspian Sea – as it turns out, the river Zhem dries up before reaching the coast, and the shores are mired with mosquito-infested swamp – and my journey would soon be on the brink of total failure. I was about to escape the hardship of the unforgiving land, only to be caught in a dangerous web of human design.

My first glimpses of this very different world I was entering were on the outskirts of Kulsary, an oil town 100 kilometres shy of the Caspian Sea. I had planned to leave the horses here to graze and recover while I went to apply for my Russian visa.

On approach to the town the open desert gave way to mangled earth that had been bulldozed into a maze of mounds and ridges. Then came twisted, rusty pieces of steel, shattered glass and burned-out cars. Heavy trucks and SUVs hurtled past on the asphalt road at unchecked speed, spraying gravel and leaving us in a wake of dust and fumes.

The brave Taskonir trembled, and Tigon looked on, unsure. This was more hostile, unkind and difficult to survive than any desert we had seen.

Eventually I paid some herdsmen in a nearby aul to look after the animals while I was away. But as it turned out the people there were in desperate times struggling to feed their own animals. When I returned after a month I was in for a shock. Word had it that the grain and hay I had bought had been used to feed the herdsmen’s own animals. I found Taskonir tied up at the back of a corral. He was skinnier than when I had left him and his eyes were dull and lifeless. His coat was sun-bleached and as dry as straw, and he barely had the energy to acknowledge me. How would he survive the journey ahead?

Even worse: the other two horses were missing.

After a tip-off from a neighbour, I found men swinging axes into freshly slaughtered horse carcasses in a nearby gully. The horses weren’t mine, but the men knew who I was and waved me on further, where I spotted Kok and Ogonyok being raced at full gallop! They had been entered in a baiga – a horse race – that was to be

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