(3rd Of 5 Parts: The Great Fox Hunt)

MANILA, Philippines — The half-wild Mongolian horse pushed his velvety muzzle against my hand as I stroked the white star on his forehead. I breathed on his nose to make sure he knows my scent and wouldn’t throw me when I mount the saddle.

As we inhaled and exhaled together, the horse and I, our vaporized breaths rose and mingled. I felt fuzzy-headed as I cinched his girth and checked the height of my stirrups. In the mercilessly thin air, sleep has eluded me for many nights.

But today is the fox hunt. I need my wits about me. I’ll be on the saddle all day, riding high on the mountains with my Kazakh host, Tekei, and his eagle.

Before the men around me awakened, I had wriggled in the first layers of my riding gear inside my sleeping bag. By the time I unzipped it to put on four more layers, I was sweating. Yet as soon as I slipped outdoors to check my horse, I was freezing again.

Tekei lumbered out of the gloom after me. His overcoat flapped about him as the wind picked up. The rest of his wranglers, our Boojum Expedition guide and the two American priest-adventurers followed.

We mounted our steeds in silence and picked our way up the Western ridge. In the pallid winter sun, the peaks took on the color of gold. I yielded to the jolting rhythm of my mount as he cantered, willing my body to relax, to become one with him, even as we teetered to the edge of the sheerest drops.

Tekei rode ahead, scouting for fox tracks on the snow. His hooded eagle bobbed up and down, balancing hard on his gloved arm as the wind blasted us on all sides. My chestnut mount slipped thrice but regained his footing.

As we passed Tekei’s nearest neighbor two mountains away, Mongolian mastiffs erupted out of nowhere, barking and snapping at our horses. Our host paused to chat with another herder on the next mountain before hastening for his appointment with the vixen.

By now, our horses were panting, their flanks heaving as we urged them up the last jagged summit. When it became too steep, we dismounted and hoisted ourselves up the rocks, hand over hand. Tekei spurred his horse on, over the impossibly perilous terrain. There was no trail at all, just loose scree where the glaciers retreated, broken basalt and granite, thorn bushes and sharp-toothed boulders.

Suddenly, the wranglers shouted. Then they were scrabbling for stones and hurling them to flush out the fox. Something yellow streaked below. Tekei released his eagle. She circled above us then swooped down in a flash. Locked together, eagle and fox rolled downhill in a cloud of snow and dust.

Tooth and claw, they fought. The vixen slashed at the eagle’s foot. But the raptor’s powerful talons gripped her nape and snapped her spine. It was over in a second. As we ran where they lay, the eagle mantled, spreading her nine-foot wide wings over her kill to hide it. She raised her head and turned to us, beak open. Blood flowed from her foot.

Tekei offered his huntress a rabbit’s leg and did a fast exchange to get her off the carcass. The eagle was wounded but not that badly, he assured me.

The vixen stared at us with glassy eyes. Tekei forgot to close them to ensure fox-demons won’t chase him. In Mongolian folk lore, foxes are tricksters, messengers of the underworld. They should not be shown the roof of the hunter’s lodge and should be buried with their tails in their mouths.

I inspected the vixen’s teats. It was little consolation they’re not swollen with milk, which would mean she has kits doomed to starve in her den. I felt sorry for her and yet worried for the eagle.

Tekei hoisted the fox behind his saddle and hooded his “berkut”. As we rode back to his lodge, a mated pair of cinereous vultures (“tas”), one of the world’s largest birds of prey, rode the thermals thousands of feet above us.

The wolf-dogs welcomed me, frisking about, tugging on my gloved hand, soliciting play. I obliged them until Abijak, the lady of the house, called us in. She served us a late meal of rice and “Five Fingers” - boiled mutton and potatoes, so called because it’s eaten with bare hands.

Before dusk, Tekei skinned the vixen outside. He sliced into her foreleg, deftly slipped her pelt off in one piece like a coat and hung it on a peg to air-dry. The flesh, he set aside for his eagle. It’s taboo to eat fox meat, unless you want to be homeless, he explained.

Next day, we set out again but it’s too windy for hunting. Tekei’s eagle “bated” several times, hanging upside-down from his arm as the gale buffeted her. Stubbornly, we climbed up and down several peaks. Tekei released his eagle thrice but she can’t find a fox and flew back to his glove, dejected.

When we took shelter on the leeward side of the mountains to rest, Tekei offered me his falconer’s glove. Unlike any I’ve worn before, it felt like a metal sheet rolled into leather, encasing my arm all the way up to the elbows like an armored cuff.

It’s a real gauntlet, designed to parry talons powerful enough to break human bones if the eagle lands too hard, walks up my arm or grabs me in excitement.

Next, Tekei transferred his huge eagle on my arm. She’s 22 pounds, very heavy, even without her summer fat, which doubles her weight. Ten talons, each longer than the fangs of a lion, dug into my glove as she perched. I could barely feel my fingers as I gripped her jesses.

The eagle’s amber eyes locked into mine as I lifted her hood. Gently, I caressed her crop. She did not protest or raise her hackles. She settled on my glove and accepted the rabbit’s leg I offered her.

Then she “feaked” on my arm, rubbing her bill against me to clean it. It was a gesture of trust which warmed my heart. But having been fed, my magnificent raptor was in no more mood to hunt.

So, it was back to the lodge and free time by sun down.

Having nothing else to do, the wranglers taught us their games on horseback. In the “kukpar” - a tug of war with two players, one has to grab a goat skin from his opponent in order to win. In the “khyz khuar”, the girl has to overtake the boy and beat the rump of his horse with her whip.

I was more interested in exploring the slopes to the East, so I borrowed my host’s Bactrian camel and set off. I fitted perfectly between his twin humps though by now it was so cold it was painful to breath. I wouldn’t have lasted long outside if I haven’t tucked my hands and feet in the camel’s thick, warm wool.

Looking up, I noticed strangely familiar clouds scudding over the moon rise. They resembled the hogsback clouds over Everest and K2. I gawked. They are hogsback clouds. They come with the jet stream, super high velocity winds that lift climbers off their feet and peel them off the mountains.

I hastened back to the lodge and hunkered down on my bed near the hearth.

After supper, while Khanat carved a newly butchered sheep for our food cache and Jaji kneaded dough for fried bread, Tekei brought out a sack of sheep ankle bones for working out puzzles – a favourite Kazakh game.

The priests played it on the floor with our guide. After several rounds, they asked Zaya to teach them Mongolian songs. Jaji wiped the flour from her hands, took down her “dombr” lute and played for us.

Exhausted from riding all day, I zipped myself up in my sleeping bag early. I dozed off before the fire in the hearth died only to awaken to complete chaos at midnight.

Everyone in the wranglers’ “ger” had to evacuate or get blown down the mountain face. But first, they have to strike down the huge tent and secure it in the dark. All night, the wind screamed deafeningly while 14 people crammed themselves in our lodge meant for four.

When I stirred again, it was light. Tekei sat before the fire, nursing his milk tea. He handed me a hot cup and I cradled it in my hand as I gazed into the whiteout.

Outside, the wolf-dogs curled up in tight balls, half buried in snow, backs to the wind, noses tucked under their bushy tails but spindrift-blasted yaks and goats chewed their cuds calmly as if nothing happened.