BOOK REVIEW:

HORSE GAMES

AUTHOR: BOB THOMPSON

PUBLISHED BY: MERLIN UNWIN BOOKS

COVER PRICE: £20

LIFELONG rider and horseman, Bob Thompson’s quest to record as much information as possible about the world’s remaining tribal horse games has taken him to some of the most remote places in the world.

Thompson started riding as a young boy, going on to take part in his first point-to-point as a teenager before entering The Life Guards, better known as the Household Cavalry, in 1966.

The lure of a trip to central Afghanistan looking for the lost ancient city of Firozkoh, saw him leave the army. While watching a game of buzkashi (effectively a national contest that involves two mounted sides dragging a dead goat or calf), he was told that a banned ancient horse game was still played somewhere in eastern Turkey, this sparked off what became a lifelong quest to record the last of the tribal horse games played in Asia and Africa.

It’s an epic journey that took him from the buzkashi horsemen in Afghanistan and Mongolia to the dancing horses of Mali and the mounted Oromo spearmen of Ethiopia. Along the way through almost countless countries, he documents what are the last vestiges of the skills of the war horse and inevitably, he encounters some very hairy experiences which are probably best left to the reader to discover for themselves!

When not travelling, he and his wife Sue farm in the Welsh Borders and enjoy racing and in between this, Thompson found the time to put together this unusual but unique book, spanning almost 300 pages.

The images in the book are a throwback to ancient times and provide the reader with an extraordinary ringside seat to cultures and practices ongoing today which are literally a world away from what the average western person could even imagine.

From mounted eagle hunters to nomads, where the horse still rules supreme from transport to trade, Thompson takes the reader through a largely undocumented world. While this book may not be for everyone, it certainly throws a different light and perspective on parts of the world and must be valued for that.