Meanwhile, the players are emerging from a team talk and are getting ready to mount their horses. In their red jerseys, white pakol hats, red knee pads and black boots they stand out like mediaeval knights among the rough and ready dress of the villagers. The captain, a wiry middle-aged man wearing dark glasses, caresses his horse’s head and talks soothingly into its ear.
A fiercely fought game sees Laspur coming in to win an 8-7 victory. The crowd pour onto the pitch and no-one tries to stop them. The quiet, rather studious figure I saw whispering soothing confidences to his horse two hours ago is the hero of the day, flung up onto the shoulders of rapturous supporters. First blood to the Chitral Valley. Hopefully, it will be a good omen.
Day Seventeen : The Shandur Pass
I’ve acquired a thick Chinese blanket from the temporary shopping mall up here on the pass and though my tent remains an ice-box, I actually slept last night, after an unpromising start when I was kept awake, not by drums and pipes but by someone being very funny near my tent. I couldn’t tell whether it was Urdu or Pashto they were speaking, but it didn’t really matter. His total control of the audience was wonderfully infectious and I lay curled up in my many layers of thermals, shirts, sweaters and fleeces, giggling away, without understanding a word.
More people have arrived overnight and our encampment is now part of a growing community. Figures are scattered among the grassy boulders, cleaning teeth, scrubbing feet and washing faces in bowls of water heated on a brushwood fire, which Maboub, who is in charge of these matters, has to keep continually tended, as thinner air at this height make things harder to burn. In the kitchen tent, where a violent gas fire looks like an accident waiting to happen, Zahoor, the chef, produces scrambled eggs, fried potatoes and even porridge for our breakfast.
At the far end of the valley, away from the hustle and bustle of the ever-expanding encampment, the ‘A’ teams are out beside the lake practising shots, gallops, passes and tight-reined turns. Both sides exercise together in the cool of early morning, then return to their separate camps.
Gilgit’s team is drawn entirely from the ranks of police and army. They’re well-drilled, organized, efficient but institutional. Their captain, Bulbul Jan, is a tall middle-aged man with neat, short hair and the modest, kindly manner of an avuncular schoolmaster. Hard to believe as he talks softly to us that he is one half of the most successful combination in free-style polo. The other is his tall, black Punjabi stallion, Truc.
Bulbul is 55 and his horse is 21. Together they have played in 15 of these matches and have led Gilgit to victory for the last two years, proving that despite the Herculean efforts required of them up here on the plateau, guile and experience still count as much as youth and strength. Bulbul claims that Truc can tell him, within 24 hours of a game, just how things will work out.
‘So what about your chances tomorrow?’
Truc bares his teeth and rears his head away, clearly impatient to end the interview.
‘Truc is in a very good mood,’ pronounces Bulbul Jan.
Chitral come across as the gentlemen amateurs, with an altogether more happy-go-lucky approach to their polo, but the mood at the camp today is subdued. Gilgit won the ‘B’ game this morning, though one of their horses collapsed and died of a heart attack at the end of the first chukka. Neither side wants this to happen, and Sikander admits that this is only one of several such deaths over the last few years, grim reminders of the demands of such a physical game at such a high altitude.
He concedes that Gilgit’s ‘A’ team are the favourites. They are unchanged from last year, and unlike Chitral’s series of misfortunes, have had no casualties among their horses. I ask about the rumours I’ve heard about black magic and spells being put on the teams.
He shrugs.
‘I never used to believe it, but now since everyone does, I’ve also started believing it.’
‘You think it’s more than just coincidence?’
He nods.
‘More, yes, more than coincidence.’
He thinks the only possible advantage for Chitral is that they have Afghan horses, tough and strong after apprenticeships carrying men and goods over the high border passes.
I ask what it will be like if they should lose tomorrow.
‘Terrible. Terrible.’
He laughs, a little desperately.
‘We try to go back in the dark. We pack up, get ready and leave at night.’
‘Do they forgive quickly in Chitral?’
Sikander Ul-Mulk pauses, then shakes his head philosophically.
‘It takes about a month or two.’
Day Eighteen : The Shandur Pass
The weather is perfect.
A crowd, estimated at around 15,000, has gathered at the ground well in advance of the game. Apart from a VIP area on top of the main stand, the accommodation is basic, ranging from purpose-built concrete terraces to standing room on the various low mounds of glacial debris that enclose the playing area. One of these, with perhaps the least good view, is reserved for women.
The six players of each side parade onto the pitch, Chitral in scarlet, Gilgit in blue and white. Protection is optional. None of the Gilgit side wears protective headgear, whereas three of the Chitralis have helmets and one wears a pakul.
I’m squeezed into one of the terraces. There are no seats and we just settle ourselves as best we can on mud and stones. My eyes meet those of a policeman with riot helmet, night stick and dark glasses, sitting at the end of our row. He pulls on a cigarette and turns away. Above us is a line of brightly coloured kites, strung together, stretching right across the ground. (I later learn that there are 105 of them, thus winning, for a Doctor Ejazul Haq of Islamabad, the world record for the number of kites ‘aired on a single thread’.)
Silence falls as a prayer is read out from the Koran. The horses canter forwards to the centre-line to receive the ball. Bulbul Jan, bareheaded, looks every bit the midfield general, effortlessly in control at the centre of his team. Truc, less effortlessly in control, is the first to fertilize the pitch.
I don’t blame him. If I was facing 50 minutes of constant running, sudden sprints, balls flying about and full-speed charges towards two-foot-high stone walls, I’d have probably done the same. In free-style polo the player is as much fair game as the ball and deliberate obstruction with either horse or mallet is a great skill. Nor are the horses and players the only ones taking risks. Mallets are dropped or broken with considerable frequency and stable boys take terrible risks rushing into the fray with replacements.
The game is non-stop, fast and even.
Predictably, Gilgit score first with Bulbul pushing in an easy goal after a furious build-up. He now gets to restart the game with a tapokh, which is very good to watch. The goal scorer races up the field at full gallop, holding both the ball and the mallet in the same hand, then, still with one hand only, releases the ball and strikes it ahead of him. It’s often missed or half hit, but the apricot-wood hammer of Bulbul’s stick meets the ball head on. It soars up the other end, bounces past the goal and is thrown back into play by a spectator, this keeping any interruption to the flow of play to a minimum. Maqbool pulls a goal back for Chitral and they go into the break unexpectedly level.
After a long interval display of ceremonial dancing, all hands and arms turning and twisting gracefully, the players are back on the pitch and a repeat of the first half is played out in the first few minutes. A Gilgit goal, then a Chitral equalizer. As a well-informed spectator next to me says it’s now all about the stamina of the horses.
Gilgit’s powerful ponies begin to outrun Chitral, racing after the long ball with breathtaking speed. Two more Gilgit goals, then Bulbul Jan and the ageing Truc first set up a superb through pass for the fifth goal before running in the next one themselves. 6-2.