Sacred horses

the long version

The Akhal-Teke horse, a desert purebred for hundreds of years, is quite unlike an Arabian, an English thoroughbred, or any other equus; it has enormous stamina (it can cover 125 miles a day for weeks on end) and beauty (a much longer neck than other horses and an iridescent coat). This breed is a Turkmen's most precious possession, but it was almost wiped out under Soviet rule, and only recently has it begun to make a comeback. Few Westerners have ever laid eyes on these marvelous creatures, but the author was determined to see and ride them, and to spend time with their breeders and trainers. However, this book is not only about horses, for Mr. Maslow is an indefatigable explorer with many other interests, and he soon found himself in trouble with the local KGB (operating under the guise of the Turkmen-American Friendship Society), which made his life difficult whenever he tried - often successfully - to wander off the beaten track. But the threat of arrest and incarceration was only one of his obstacles; a Muslim country with few amenities, Turkmenistan is so alien a society that even the simplest exchanges between visitor and native are fraught with potential misunderstandings, and it is these perceptual mine fields that make this book so comic and so entertaining. In short, Sacred Horses is the perfect book for the armchair traveler; in the grand nineteenth-century tradition, it takes its author's hardships lightly, is funny and erudite, and describes an exotic culture and obscure area that few of us will ever see in person.