World Nomad Games

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I will say, this is ex- completely anecdotal, but I went to the World Nomad Games in Turkey several years ago now, uh, which are these sort of...

It's like the Olympics for kind of traditional Central Asian nomadic sports, and there are a lot of events around various types of, like, horseback archery.

And I will say, watching some of the Mongolian archers, uh, shooting moving targets from horseback, from a galloping horse I, I thought to myself, I understood why, I understand now why [laughs] all of Eurasia was terrified of these people for centuries.

But yeah, it was a so it was a it's going to be a ten day horseback trip riding eight to ten hours a day through the mountains.

And then at the end of the trip, the World Nomad Games happened to be going on, which is It's a very recent development that Kyrgyzstan spearheaded, which is basically like a nomadic Olympics, like their national sports, archery and horseback wrestling, all kinds of horse sports, basically, that they're trying to use to show their cultural traditions and preserve them.

And we actually had someone on our expedition from New Zealand who competed in one of the events.

which, which kind of just lined up coincidentally.

And now you're seeing posts, obviously, Soviet Union's no more.

They're their own independent country, and they're trying to reconnect with these roots culturally.

You see, this is why they created the World Nomad Games, to re-express some of this.

And you see that even the Soviets couldn't they couldn't stamp it all out.

Oh.

And just to give you an example, this week, um, it was the World Nomad Games this last month in Kyrgyzstan.

Oh, I ca-

And actually some, some American ca-

You can learn more about that in this video and also why I decided to leave in this video.

I planned this trip with a friend who was coming to visit me before I ended up leaving so this is my first time being back uh since I left three months ago and I will say I was a little bit nervous going back and it brought up like a lot of feelings but I've had some time to reflect on everything and think about the trips and I'll share some of that at the end of my Uzbekistan video which is coming hopefully next week so make sure to subscribe if you don't already so you don't miss anything um Yeah, Kyrgyzstan was the first portion of the trip, and that was all about seeing the World Nomad Games and being out in nature.

There's just like so much beautiful stuff to do in Kyrgyzstan.

It's 90% mountains.

and then in the middle there is what the top of the yurt looks like so i love that like visual representation of their culture um yeah i had a great time in kyrgyzstan i felt really connected to the country there's a lot of similarities between kyrgyzstan and kazakhstan They're like brothers.

And so it was nice to be in a familiar place, but I learned a ton, which was awesome.

And I am so excited to tell you guys about the World Nomad Games and everything that I did there.

So I flew out of Korea, had a layover in Beijing, and that is where the adventure begins.

And it's just so picturesque.

And it's actually where the World Nomad Games are being held this year.

And as we're recording this episode, the World Nomad Games are going on.

Yeah.

So again, big nomadic culture here in Kyrgyzstan.

So they're having events such as like eagle hunting, horseback riding, other types of events that you would associate with nomad culture that they've turned into sport.

They have here at the World Nomad Games.

And you mentioned we went to a couple of gorges.

And it is very cool.

There were a lot of white people at the World Nomad Games.

Really? A lot of like influencer types.

A lot of like really good looking, really taking

Very, very

different.

And you went there not necessarily for the World Nomad Games.

This was just a contingent going to our sister city area.