I moved up country to the Central Highlands to Qinghai province, it is here that I wanted to locate a Mr.Ma and his family.

I had an address but all my attempts to contact him before leaving England using people living in the area had failed. Following my success so far I felt it was worth a try on the ground, so to speak.

I soon located the vicinity of his address but no matter how I tried no one in the area knew of a falconer or anyone called Ma.

Using a local taxi driver we toured all the most likely places from the little information I had until we came across a few small children playing in an alleyway. They knew of a man with some birds and took us to his house, lucky for us he was in and once he had seen some of my pictures he was interested.

Yes he knew of Mr.Ma and he would help us find him. On our way through the suburbs of town we visited the local Mosque as Mr. Ma and all in this neighbourhood were muslims.
We arrived as prayers had just finished and everyone was leaving, my book of falconry photographs was enthusiastically viewed by the crowd and I was given many “thumbs up” and back slaps of approval.
Leaving my new found friends the taxi driver having gained the right information took me directly to Mr.Ma’s house.

In fact I had been within yards of it that very morning, but then no one knew Mr.Ma the falconer.