Khampa Horse Race Festival – Equestrian Event
Beyond Kentucky Derby. Amazing stunts. Celebrating Khampa warriors’ nomadic lifestyles, the festivals highlight traditional games including scarf-snatching stunts, equestrians wielding swords, shooting arrows, and firing rifles. In fits of joy, spectators often storm the battlefield after the races. Eat some yak jerky, dance to regional music and drink lots of highland barley wine called chang. Every August, farmers and merchants, monks and minstrels, nomads and tourists converge on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau to watch the region’s famed Khampa horsemen. The Khampa horsemen are clad in all their finery. Bells jingle on their horses. Riders’ long black hair is adorned with silver, turquoise and coral jewelry. They wear big hats on their heads and big knives on their belts. The festival opens with a charge past the reviewing stand and continues with a display of skills learned during a life spent on horseback. The riders hang sideways off saddles, scooping silk scarves off the ground at full gallop. They twirl flintlock muskets over their heads and fire at targets on the ground. “To Khampa men, riding horses is a glorious thing,” says Gezun Norbu of Litang. “We feel proud to be the descendants of the heroic King Gesar. To gallop on horseback across the boundless grasslands makes us feel extremely confident and happy.” Technology is bringing change to the region, even without an airport or train station to be found in the mountainous terrain. Satellite-dish TV …
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