The centuries-old Central Asian sport called buzkashi, in which players on horseback fight over a decapitated, disemboweled goat or calf carcass, is certainly to Western observers one of the world’s strangest competitions. Although it’s been described as "polo with a headless goat," the comparison doesn’t really hold up. The rules vary by country, but most buzkashi matches have no teams, no clock, and no clearly defined playing field. It’s a war of all against all, in which the winner is the horseman (traditionally, only men play the game) who successfully carries the carcass past some defined point or throws it in a certain area.
From the moment she first heard of this extreme sport, Spanish photographer Anna Huix knew she wanted to shoot a match. She finally got her chance in March 2018 on a two-week trip to Tajikistan—a mountainous, landlocked former Soviet republic bordered by Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and China. “I’m fascinated by traditions, and buzkashi is a very old tradition,” Huix says. “I was also interested in the fact that it barely has rules. There seemed to be something wild and raw about it.”
So it was that Huix, traveling along with a South African journalist, ended up among the several thousand spectators at a buzkashi match in a dusty valley on the Central Asian steppe. As the only two women there, and also the only people who weren't locals, the journalist and Huix—who was then six months pregnant—were treated like VIPs by the crowd, offered food and drinks and invited to stand on the back of a truck for prime viewing. “I asked the older men why there were no women, and he told me that in Tajikistan men like buzkashi and women like weddings,” she says. “They liked the fact that we were interested.”
Once the game began, Huix found it hard to keep track of the action—not surprising in a game with 80 or so horsemen all fighting over the same animal carcass. In the Tajik version of the game, every time someone manages to fling the carcass inside a marked circle, they win a prize and the game restarts. Prizes include sheep, rugs, cars, and sometimes a house. Some of the players own their own horses; others are hired by the horse’s owner or agree to split any winnings with the owner. As far as Huix could tell, anyone who wanted to play was welcome to join the scrum.
The game Huix observed lasted several hours and only ended when so much dust had been kicked up by the horses that it became impossible to see. After the match, many of the contestants happily posed for the photographer in their traditional sporting gear, including old-fashioned leather helmets. Throughout, Huix found herself simultaneously appalled and fascinated by the sport.
“I found it so brutal—I mean, they are playing with the dead body of an animal,” she says. “Then again, I’m from Spain, where we have bullfighting. So many of our traditions seem to involve making animals suffer.”
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