Adilet doesn’t own a watch. His life is governed by the season, not the second. Just as he did last year, and the year before that, he and his family will live in a collection of yurts in the shadow of the towering Muztagh Ata mountain until the first winter snow forces them down to lower altitude. At over 4,500 metres, their summer camp is a fleeting footnote to human endurance among the massive contours of a timeless landscape.
Jambulah, the camp to which Adilet returns home most evenings with his herd of yak, has been used by Kyrgyz nomads for decades. It is just one of many spartan camps and villages that cling to the Karakoram Highway, the world’s highest paved international road, as it winds through this remote corner of western China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
The Karakoram Highway might end somewhere near Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, but Adilet’s nomadic existence is strictly confined by international borders. While he, his wife Cholpon, and their two sons Jyrgal and Terenk, consider themselves purely Kyrgyz, they remain forever separated from nearby Kyrgyzstan by arbitrary borders and mass migrations of a bygone era.
‘We live on Chinese soil but will always be Kyrgyz,’ says Adilet, proudly. ‘My sons will grow up Kyrgyz. They will learn Kyrgyz songs and read about our nation’s history. Of course things change, but we shouldn’t forget our heritage or traditional values.’
Muztagh Ata, or the ‘father of all ice peaks’, dominates the Jambulah skyline. Soaring to 7,546 metres and often wreathed in cloud, its massive granite bulk forms part of a sub-range of the Pamir Mountains that delineate the Tibetan Plateau’s northwestern edge. Twin glaciers extend from the snow-bound summit toward Jambulah, and the weather here can change from kind to cruel in an instant.
While Adilet is out grazing his yaks, Cholpon stays at home with her mother, tending the camp, milking livestock and making cheese, yogurt and butter. Even in summer it’s a constant struggle for Adilet to find enough vegetation for his bovine charges above 4,000 metres, and he often wanders far in search of the most succulent grasses, herbs and lichens. The yaks must be corralled every night to protect against predators and prevent nocturnal scattering of the herd.
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