It was very slow to fill and, just as he was about to raise it to his lips, the falcon flew up, plucked the cup from his hands, and dashed it to the ground. He removed the falcon from his arm, and took out the silver cup which he always carried with him. Then, to his amazement, he saw a thread of water flowing from a rock just in front of him. In the summer heat, all the streams had dried up, and he could find nothing to drink. They had stayed in the forest for longer than expected, and Khan was desperately tired and thirsty. Disappointed, Genghis Khan returned to the encampment and in order not to take out his frustration on his companions, he left the rest of the party and rode on alone. However, despite the group’s enthusiastic efforts, they found nothing. His companions carried bows and arrows, but Genghis Khan carried on his arm his favourite falcon, which was better and surer than any arrow, because it could fly into the skies and see everything that a human beiong could not. One morning, the Mongol warrior, Genghis Khan, and his court went out hunting. What also remains is a story that one of those people told me while we were having lunch. But what will remain engraved for ever in my mind are the snowy mountains in the background, the silhouetted figures of horse and horseman, the falcon leaving the horseman’s arm, and that deadly dive. They said that the art is passed from generation to generation – father trains son, and so on. That scene was repeated once more during the morning.īack at the village, I met the people who were waiting for me and asked them how they managed to train the falcon to do everything I had seen it do, even to sit meekly on its owner’s arm (and on mine too they put some leather armbands on me and I could see the bird’s sharp talons close up.) When we got close, we found a vixen caught in the bird’s talons. The bird took off, circled a few times, and then dived straight down towards the ravine and stayed there. I don’t know why he decided to stop just there, and I had no way of asking. Our small party stopped, and the man with the falcon on his arm remained a little way apart from us and removed the small silver hood from the bird’s head. Unable to talk to them, I paid more attention to what they were doing. I had no interpreter with me, but what could have been a problem turned out to be a blessing. I don’t want to get into a discussion here about the word ‘hunt’, except to say that, in this case, Nature was simply following its course. On a visit to Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, I had the chance to accompany some hunters who still use the falcon as a weapon.
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