Discovering the Land of Nomads

I'm a nomad. Seriously, I really am; it's in my blood. You see, I'm Kyrgyz, one of the world's last nomadic peoples, and one of its even fewer nomadic sovereign nations. Our people's history unfolded under the shadows of the Tien Shan Mountains – literally, the Celestial Mountains.
However, I'm not only Kyrgyz; I'm also post-Soviet, which means I've got a strong element of Russian culture in me, too; if not in my veins, then in my brain. Unlike my ancestors, who grew up in yurts on the foothills of heaven, I grew up in a concrete slab in a sleepy Russian town.

I think it wasn't until the summer of 2014 that I really began to reconnect with the nomad within me. I had just started working for Trip to Kyrgyzstan, a social entrepreneurship project whose mission is to attract international tourism to Kyrgyzstan. One day, my colleague Pavel announced, “We need to go to Song Köl Lake.” This is a lake of almost mystical significance for the really traditional Kyrgyz, but somehow to my Russified mind seemed backward or uninteresting. I immediately asked why we needed to go there, to which Pavel bluntly replied, “How can you inspire people to experience the 'Great Land of Nomads' if you’ve never experienced it yourself?”

And so: the road. A sleek Chinese-made snake of asphalt slithering through the Kyrgyz highlands. In Kyrgyz we call a nomad köchmön, from köchüü, “movement”: “I am who moves”. The nomadic vision of life is of pattern within change, following a timeworn path despite apparent wandering. And most of all, the nomad is attached to infinity. When we looked out upon the lake, it seemed as though it was a shard of the brilliant sky fallen to the earth. We had arrived just at the moment of sunset, which was occurring between two sharp mountain peaks in the distance that seemed like two drops of blood against a shimmering argent surface. The scene was of a timeless cycle, an eternal process, far above and away from the Russian noise and hurry of what I had, just a day before, considered to be normal life – and my Kyrgyz genes cried out in exultation.

However, all human beings alive today ultimately descend from nomadic ancestors; the Kyrgyz have simply held onto our most ancient ways. This is why you, too, should come to Kyrgyzstan. For it is here, if only for a brief moment standing upon the Celestial Mountains, that you can leave behind what has become “normalcy” and return to the nomad within you.