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In another lifetime, I was a travelling musician playing ragtime and swing songs in obscure corners of Europe. My act was billed, when it was billed at all, as 'songs about chickens, cowboys and Jesus,' thereby, in one fell swoop, intriguing, warning and offending any potential audiences. The songs about cowboys were about as close as I got to fooling with horses for nigh on five years - until my guitar playing road-buddy Elijah and I got to Hungary, still behind the Iron Curtain at the end of the 1980s.

For reasons to do with economics, glorious autumn weather, ('an old woman's summer' they called it in Magyar), and a half-hearted search for adventures, we found ourselves on a four day walk across the east of the country, guitars slung over our shoulders, sleeping in orchards, and stopping to drink with Gypsies, farm hands and old cavalry officers. We got to the puszta - the Hungarian Plains - late one afternoon, and strode into the flat-as-water grasslands. It was so flat that if you had good eyesight you could look into the far distance and see the back of your own head. We were in the homeland of one of the three distinct types of csikos, the traditional Hungarian horse herders whose unique style of horsemanship and fierce code of independence are as much the spiritual embodiment of the Hungarian, as the cowboy is of the American. As they had done for centuries, the csikos still grazed their horses loose across the plains.

In the dusk we heard the distant snare-drum roll of hooves. A herd on the horizon galloped towards where we stood by a water-crane, a barn and a small hut. A quartet of csikos - whips popping like revolvers, stretched along their galloping horses' necks, culotte-like riding trousers flapping, hats pulled low - rode the herd's flanks, turning the horses in a stream across the plains, and milling them to a halt in front of the long, thatched barn. The herd was coralled for the night. The csikos dismounted. Seeing out guitars they called out greetings. One mounted again and rode off to fetch a bottle of palinka from the stud. Another tumbled out pockets full of wild mushrooms. A third lit a fire in the reed-walled windbreak.

I went over to look at the 'saddle-horses'...or more correctly the 'girthless-pad-horses.' Each had a felt square, edges bound in leather, simple stirrups dangling - but there was nothing in the way of a girth to tie the pad onto the horse. A csikos gestured at one of the animals, suggesting I gave it a go. Grabbing a handful of mane, I vaulted on. "Nem! Nem! Nem!" I was admonished; that wasn't the csikos way. The correct method was to mount using the stirrup, stretching one's right arm over to the other side of the horse to hook one's thumb into a ring and hold the saddle in place. Sacrificing elegance to success, I managed to get on top of the horse with the pad, approximately, between us both. Being on a horse again, in Hungary, made sense. And if chickens and Jesus had little to do with cantering across the puszta, it was certainly a time for cowboy songs.

We sat late into the night singing, drinking, eating fried mushrooms and stretching a dozen or so words of Magyar into stop-start conversation about horses, whips and dancing. Somehow one of the csikos managed to work those same meagre words, fleshed out with a bit of finger-counting and some mime, into a description of the 'puszta otos' - 'the Great Plains five.' Simply put the 'puszta otos' involved a csikos standing on the rumps of two horses and driving three more before him at a full gallop. As 'Roman riding' it's a trick practiced in circuses and rodeos across the world, but the Hungarians have raised it to an art form, and made it their own expression of ecstatic horsemanship. The image stayed with me long after I left Hungary.

The csikos are descendants of the Magyar horse tribes who settled in the Carpathian basin some thousand years ago. The Magyars were bowmen and light cavalry experts from the Asian steppes, and their horses were mostly the Turkmen type. It was they who were at the root of Hungary's great horse traditions. From their fast, lightly equipped mounted warriors, evolved the hussars of the 18th and 19th centuries, who in turn became the template for light cavalry the world over.

The dead flat expanse of the plains encouraged the development of ever more refined horse-drawn vehicles (indeed the word 'coach' is claimed to come from the name of the village of Kocs famed for its cart and wagon builders), and experiments with harness systems and arrangements of horses - pairs, teams, tandems, unicorns, five-in-hands - anticipated developments in other countries and made Hungary a primary player in competitive carriage driving as it still is today.

The third strand of horsemanship came in the form of the csikos and betyars. As an uneasy peace descended on the plains, the region became famed for its lyre-horned white cattle, its spiral-horned raki sheep, an Alice in Wonderland type of Mongol pig with pelts of long, curly blonde hair, and of course horses. Oriental Arabs, Thoroughbreds and half-bloods were imported and then bred into a plethora of Hungarian breeds.

The csikos were the hired horse herders whose clothes, riding style and equipment reflected a life spent accompanying the free-grazing horses across the puszta. Csikos spent days and nights with one catch-horses always bridled and to hand, ready to ride down strays and stampedes. Their saddles were girth-less and simple so they could be thrown onto a horse's back and mounted within seconds; the csikos of the Bugas region sped things up even more by always riding bareback. Perhaps it was the boredom of long hours alone that motivated the horsemen to teach their saddle horses ridiculous tricks, but the csikos claim a practical purpose for each. Whatever the case, the csikos became a by-word for superbly trained horses, and seat-of-the-breeches riding skills.

In the mid 1800s an Austrian artist, (and a man after my own heart), Adam Koch, painted his vision of the csikos spirit - a horseman so at one with his horses that he could float above five of them, effortlessly surfing a wave of pure horse energy, in the 'puszta otos.' Perhaps he had actually seen it performed, but legend credits the image to his romantic imagination, and claims that it was only a century later in the 1950s that a csikos in the Bugas finally managed to perfect the 'Great Plains five.'

A couple of weeks ago I returned to Hungary for the first time. I was on a tour of horse based enterprises to see what was on offer in the way of horse tourism. A whistle-stop gallop around riding schools, horse shows, Arab studs and cross-country riding centres. I got to ride horses left, right and centre: but I wanted above all to track down the puszta otos.

With Barbara my translator, (I was going to need more than a dozen words of Magyar to understand what was going on), I drove down to Tanyacsarda in the Bugas plains. The csarda - roughly 'horse farm' - was pure tourist show, the equivalent of a daily rodeo, but the csikos were as authentic as dude ranch cowboys. Sandor, one of the horsemen, knew exactly who he was:

“I am a csikos who shows people who know nothing about horses, what a horse and rider can do together.”

Their tricks were the survival techniques not only of the horse herders of the plains where there could be a 70 degree difference between summer heat and winter snows, but also of the betyars ('free men'), the 18th century outlaws whose weapons were the knife and the 12' bull whip, accurate enough to flick a man of the end of a cigarette, and whose horsemanship was based on the skills needed to steal horses and outrun the soldiers sent to hunt them down.

The csikos entered an expansive field dotted with trees, watercranes and broken-down wagons, at a full gallop, saddle-less, whips cracking. One drove five horses, in a cat's cradle of reins, in the puszta otos. They were as much a part of their Magyar felver - Hungarian half-breds - as centaurs. Skidding to a halt, the four horsemen jumped to the ground and their mounts collapsed, flat out, beside them.

"This was the only way to hide a horse in the enormity and flatness of the plain," I was told. The horsemen stood on the barrels of their steeds, circling and exploding their whips inches above the horses heads, "And this got them used to gunfire.”

The riders lay back in the folds of their mounts' stifles, hats pulled across their eyes.

"The most comfortable place to siesta on the puszta, and your horse is always to hand - you're always ready for escape." One by one the animals sat up like dogs, and the csikos fitted themselves into the sentry-box-like shelter between their front legs..."the only dry place in the summer storms that sweep the plains." The horses scrambled to their feet and the riders swung back onto them. One produced a red handkerchief and the others gave chase.

"We call this roka vadaszat - 'the fox hunt.'" Feinting and twisting at the gallop, canting their horses into the corners like motor-bikes, they snatched the handkerchief from each other, hanging off the horses' necks to avoid attack, or whirling them round in sudden clouds of dust.

After the show, back at the stable lines, Barbara explained that I could ride a bit. Sandor looked doubtful, even more so when I removed the English saddle he'd put on the proffered horse. I vaulted up onto the half-bred's back and trotted, then cantered and then galloped around the arena. The horsemen looking on with the keen anticipation of those about to be mightily entertained paid me the compliment of rapidly becoming bored.

"They say you've got a job, if you want," Barbara shouted,
"So you can get off now."

My showing-off had the desired effect, and my interest in the puszta otos was going to be rewarded. From the Tanyacsarda I was driven to the newly-built carriage driving centre of Kincscem Lovaspark at Tapioszentmarton. There was stabling for 160 horses, and in a grid of arena four-in-hands and pairs were going through dressage practice. Imre Ledacskiss, manager for owner Janos Kocsi showed me round.

"Some of them are practicing for the World Pair Driving Championships in August - just down the road at Kecskemet - and our whips have a good chance."

In the yard a tangle of horses were being bridled and arranged in rough rows. They nipped at each other and skittered around whilst skeins of reins were sorted out. A stocky cskios, in long loose trousers, his whip looped over his shoulder, stood at the back holding a pair of enormous felt-soled boots. Imre, Barbara and I walked out to the open country beyond the yard and waited. A few minutes later there was a mad jingling of bells, the sound of 40 trotting hooves and the cracking of a whip. Viktor Buck hove into view bobbing atop two horses with eight horses pulling ahead of him.

"That," said Imre, "is the 'pusztan ten.' Viktor is one of only three men who can do it - but even more amazing is that he doesn't couple the horses to each other; he holds them together with the reins only."

There was a powerful shouted command and the herd broke into a canter. "It's all in the knees - to follow the movement of the horses. And you need to be a little bit crazy." Imre was commentating, as Viktor casually pulled one or other of the handful of reins to keep the bunch tight, then loosed his whip, sending it out over the heads of the horses, any one of which alone would have been a difficult ride. There was the repeated crack of the lash in the air as the team surged into a gallop.

Viktor spun them in a tight circle, leaning back, at ease with the forces of gravity, centrifuge and ten spirited horses.

"What's really amazing is that he takes any of the horses here, and just puts them into the team. No training...but for him it works. By August, and the World Pairs Championship, he'll be doing twelve, and after that...who knows."

"After that," I pointed out he'll be able to exercise your whole yard in one session. A useful man."

As Viktor galloped the horses in tight spirals through the gathering dusk, he was a vision that even the most imaginative artist would have felt fell into the realm of the fantastic - a figure of mythology, a chariot of night drawing darkness across the Great Plains of Hungary.

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