Kazakhstan: Eagle Hunters, Vast Steppes and the World's Largest Landlocked Country
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Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country and the ninth largest country overall — a steppe nation the size of Western Europe, most of it flat, treeless, and extraordinarily empty. The scale defeats expectation. Driving across the Kazakh steppe in any direction for hours produces the same horizon, the same dry grass, the same enormous sky. It is the kind of landscape that either oppresses or liberates, depending entirely on the person standing in it.
Eagle hunting is one of the oldest hunting traditions in the world, practised by the Kazakh people for at least four thousand years. Berkutchi — eagle hunters — train golden eagles from young birds, building a relationship over years that allows them to work together in the hunt. The eagles are kept on the hunter's wrist, fed by hand, and released to pursue foxes and hares across the steppe. The bond between hunter and eagle is the central relationship. When an eagle grows old, it is released back into the wild. The practice continues in western Kazakhstan and the Altai Mountains.
Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, sits against the Tian Shan mountains and has a skyline that reflects the oil wealth that transformed the country after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The capital was moved to the purpose-built city of Nur-Sultan in 1997 — a political statement about the country's future built on steppe that had never had a city. The resulting architecture is surreal, a mix of international styles that speaks more about ambition than history.
