IT STARTS AS A LOW VIBRATION, BUILDING into a gentle tremor, then ground-shaking thunder. Earthquake? I roll up the thick felt door of the yurt and peer out into the dawn light. Horses, quite easily two or three hundred, are being herded down from their high mountain pasture to the valley below, driven by three riders, their shrill calls steering the herd so that it twists and turns like a flock of birds. They pass close by, barely giving me a glance, leaving a cloud of dust kicked up by a thousand hoofs.
Horses are everywhere – and everything – in Kyrgyzstan. They are ridden and used as beasts of burden. They are bartered, they are eaten and they are milked. Their dung is used as fuel. The country smells of horse, an earthy, powerful aroma riding the breeze that ripples the sea of grass. Man first learned to ride on vast, rugged steppes such as these, and still today the horse is the most effective way to traverse this magnificently verdant landscape.
Kyrgyzstan emerged blinking from the ruins of the USSR in 1991, one of the five ‘Stans’ of which many people remain barely aware – an area that travel writer Colin Thubron described as The Lost Heart of Asia. The country is an enigma, caught between big brother China to the east, the emerging giant of Kazakhstan to the north, and some-time fractious rivals Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to the south and east.
この記事は Action Asia の September - October 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は Action Asia の September - October 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
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