COWBOYS & ALIENS

摘要

There are five csikosok galloping alongside my gently bumping Toyota Hilux, dressed in stifflooking black shirts and high-necked tunics, bright black riding boots and wide split-skirted trousers fashioned from bolts of the brightest azure blue. They wear black felt hats with upturned brims, like windblown Stetsons, loops of bullwhip coiled snugly left-to-right against their chests and tight expressions. The horses sport a braided lasso wound around their necks, and have no girth straps to secure their saddles, so the men ride splay-footed, centaurish and uncanny, even as we lope across the Puszta, smoke-like dust curling away behind as if the horse's hooves are smouldering. It looks like a song and feels like a poem. Pity then, that I'm a car writer, and spend the time subconsciously assessing damping. Sorry. The Puszta itself is known by many names, translating literally as 'the bare' or 'the empty", but essentially it's the westernmost of the Eurasian steppes, known variously as the Alfold, the Pannonian Steppe or simply The Great Hungarian Plain.