MARCI-l I APRIL 2015 SPRING STYL~ S-1M PL~ ALL MOD~RN CLASSICS ABOARD! TH~ N~W COLL~CTI BL~S THE EAGLE MOL TO H·u NTERS MILANO! o/ MONGOLIA H~LLOJ L~TT~R MRS. FROM PARIS ~~RR~RA INSID~ T~~ D~PARTM~NT P/u~ STOR~ RUSS~LL W~STBROOK ON SN ~AK~RS & CAS~ certain extinction. It has become his passion. only in 1990. The tarmac wa~ shrouded in The Kazakhs were- and many still are­ His Golden Eagle Festival now attracts hun­ ground mist, and as the sun rose, we saw ash­ Muslim nomads who emigrated into western dreds of people every October, along with colored mountains and white nomad gers, or Mongolia in the 1860s under pressure from curious visitors and voracious photographers felt tents. Two Land Cruisers took.us through the aggressively expanding czarist Russia. from the outside world. Olgii, with its decayed Soviet squares, through Their language is Turkic and thus unintelli­ "But then even most Mongolians could be immense flocks of goats mingled with red­ gible to Mongols, but they share with their said to be from the outside world compared to cheeked children on their way to school. On hosts an ancient steppe culture based on the Olgii," Jalsa said. "You'll see. It's one of the the far side, we followed the course of the horse, on archery, and on hunting. In Ka­ most remote places on earth. I mean, it's one dark-blue Khovd River, which curves through zakh, eagle hunters are known as berkutchi, of the most remote places in Mongolia." the desert steppes. Yaks and argali sheep me­ from the word for "eagle," berkut, and as with I would soon see what he meant. By five, andered along the river as well, shadowed by the Mongols, their falconry skills have been we were in the air, flying over the arid and ice­ saker falcons. Jalsa's temporary ger camp is honed over centuries. Genghis Khan himself bound steppes, over vast lakes with desert built by the edge of this river every October is reputed to have kept a thousand hunting shores. It takes about four hours to fly from for the Golden Eagle Festival and then dis­ birds for his pleasure. Ulaanbaatar to Olgii. Looking down, I didn't mantled afterward. It lies several miles from Edelkhan explained that Turkic and Mon­ see a single road or even a single house. Ocher Olgii, in a wilderness of grassland and glitter­ golic peoples had been living in the Altai re­ and gray, the steppe stretches to every horizon. ing beech trees, the gers spread out along the gion for many thousands of years. (The fol­ Mongolia is a vast country of 600,000 square gravel banks. lowing day, indeed, I wandered for hours miles but contains less than 3 million people. across the steppe with a young guide and It has perhaps the lowest population density hat night, we made a bonfire by the found scores of prehistoric petroglyphs and on earth. Inside the Hunnu Air plane, how­ river under a steppe moon, and Jalsa ancient deer-stones, spear-shaped pillars that ever, the ruddy-faced Kazakhs in their enor­ told us how he had built the festival marked the possible sites of 2,000-year-old mous sable-fur hats felt like a crowd. We our­ with three Kazakh partners, who, as graves.) The carving on the rocks showed ibex selves were now a group of seven: Jalsa and if on cue, turned up in person to par­ and wolves and hunters armed with bows. mysel£ Ms. Rodriguez (the tough-girl star of Ttake in several rounds of Chinggis. They were But no one knew when ~hese people had GENGHIS KHAN HIMSELF IS REPUTED TO HAVE KEPT A THOUSAND HUNTING BIRDS FOR HIS PLEASURE. Avatar and the Fast and Furious franchise), three jolly and bibulous luminaries of Olgii: started to use eagles as a weapon. and her four companions: a former New Zea­ an archeologist named Edelkhan, specializing "It's a very ancient tradition," Edelkhan as­ land army officer living in Las Vegas with the in local ancient petroglyphs; a magistrate sured me. "It's widespread on the steppes. splendidly local name of Genghis Cohen; called Medulkhan, involved in local politics; However, it declined in the Soviet period." Euro-Nascar racing champion David Perisset and his attorney brother, Kazbek. (Mongo­ With a wingspan of up to seven feet and a (also living in Las Vegas) and his wife, Audrey; lians habitually use only one name.) Eventu­ maximum weight of 15 pounds, the golden and, from Paris, Hermine, the beautiful ally a famous local musician and gynecologist eagle is one of the world's largest raptors, an daughter of a former president of Gabon who by the name of Kugershan also showed up in animal that can hunt foxes and young deer in now helps run one of the country's top air­ traditional costume with his daughter, and the wild. Trained by humans, it can even run lines. Genghis Cohen, I soon learned, was not the two of them played old Kazakh tunes on down small gray wolves, though there is some Mongolian at all: His Maori father had simply a pair of mandolin-like dombra. Saturday dispute as to whether it can kill them. The admired the military genius of the 13th-cen­ night on the Khovd. berkutchi train their birds by dragging fox tury conqueror. The owner of a specialist "We started this festival at the end of the pelts behind their horses and calling the eagles shooting range, Cohen had always wanted to '90s," Jalsa said. ''And back then, in 1998, the to them as they canter at a fast pace- the birds come to Mongolia and try his hand at tradi­ eagle hunters had virtually died out. The swoop down at more than a hundred miles an tional archery. I wondered if they were typical young boys were moving away to look for hour and savage the pelts. During the two-day of the eclectic people that Jalsa took around jobs in Ulaanbaatar and elsewhere. There festival, each hunter rehearses this same move his ancestral home with his company Nomadic were just a handful of hunters left. Now we again and again, testing his eagle's killing Expeditions (nomadicexpeditions.com). I knew, for have dozens who come here for the festival. skills, and is subsequently graded by a panel of one thing, that he had twice taken Richard We have over 400 eagle hunters in the region judges. In real life, though, eagle hunters work Gere around Mongolia. He later introduced of Bayan-Olgii today. We've helped revive a in teams. They trek for days on horseback in me to a crown prince of Bhutan. whole dimension ofKazakh culture." some of the coldest regions on earth in search Olgii's airport looks like that of a Soviet The gynecologist and his daughter then of their favorite quarry: the slow-footed corsac border post, which, in a sense, is exactly what launched into a strange, lilting version of Rod fox, prized for its voluptuous fur. it once was. Mongolia left the Soviet Union Stewart's "Sailing." The vodka began to flow. On the festival's first day, we drove out 208 across open desert to the foot of a rocky out­ cookers) . One has to pluck_out one of the black Jalsa began work in his uncle's construction crop on top of which a flag had been raised. It stones and rub it therapeutically in one's business. He became a skilled carpenter, and was from this summit that the eagles would be hands- satisfYingly medieval. As we started an­ soon he was running his own company build­ released one by one. Below, surrounded by other round of ritual vodka abuse while han­ ing wood-frame houses. It became one of the lines of old off-road Russian bukhankas dling the mutton-greasy stones, Jalsa pulled out largest companies of its kind in the United ("bread-loaf" vans), a wide field was demar­ a far bigger surprise: a bottle of wine from the States, All-tech Carpentry Contractors, and cated by stones and then divided by three par­ renowned Italian producer Angelo Gaja. Jalsa made his considerable fortune. allel white lines. Each horseman had to ride He said he had brought it with him just in across the lines as his eagle pursued him, and case any of us turned out to be connoisseurs. It n 1990 events in far distant Mongolia the sooner the raptor closed in, the higher the was astonishing, and it was followed by a bot­ came home to New Jersey. The Soviet rider's score. Jalsa explained that the eagles de of a far rarer wine, a Soldera Brunelle di Union broke up, and Ulaanbaatar de­ were not bred in captivity but culled from wild Montalcino. Strange indeed to be sitting in the clared independence. A six-man delega­ nests and then released after seven years of middle of the Mongolian steppe around a tion from the new national parliament hunting service. The tradition upon releasing wood fire sipping a Soldera Brunelle from a Iarrived in the United States, headed by them back into the wild is to leave a sheep's silver drinking bowl normally dedicated to al­ Dashiin Byambasuren, who would go on to carcass on a hillside as a good-bye gift. coholic fermented mare's milk. But then it become prime minister. The delegation later Out there on the plains, with mountains on was, in some way, typical of]alsa's way of doing asked Jalsa to help them develop the country's all sides, the searing winds promised snow.