TONGBAS
AND MOMOS

We, are creatures of flesh and blood. As we wander we experience the outer world mainly through our physical senses. How gold the caramel sun burns your skin. Soft mangos, so sweet it washes away the world. Elephantine thunder of summer rain, sulphur fumes that rises from the belly of the earth. We are physical, elemental things - strands of electricity coursing through wet bags of meat, burping farting touching the world.

Hey, I came here to read about the WORLD NOMAD GAMES, you say as you roll up your sleeves, ready to acclimatise the writer with a healthy dose of violence. What was all that nonsense all about? I want to hear all about the WORLD NOMAD GAMES, this rugged and conventionally manly festival, this celebration of all that is metal and hardcore and leather, you promised me hot virile men and hot virile women and their leathery grandmas!

Wait! I say, that’s cause the WORLD NOMAD GAMES is truly all about the haptics, a celebration of how our ancestors used to interface with the world. It honours our ancient hunter-gatherer nomadic ways, when we were tuned in to the rhythms of the land. Sadly our nomadic past have faded mostly into history, and I have surrounded my life with concrete and 5G. Touch some grass - I, along with most of my fellow city folk - we have lost the privilege to the secrets of the world.

We pause to recollect our senses here. Before we lose ourselves further in existential ennui, let’s briefly talk about what is the WORLD NOMAD GAMES.

The WNG started about a decade back in Kyrgyzstan, when Kyrgyzstan felt there was a severe lack of opportunities for people to vigorously dedicate one’s warrior spirit to cool pursuits such as Kok Buru - horse rugby but with headless goats, and horseback archery and oily wrestling and…

This was what the World Nomad Games is about. 5 days in a valley in Kyrgyzstan, where forests sloped into a valley, where the atmosphere was more of a local sunday bazaar than any semblance of an international sports competition. The WNG attracts people from all over the world, tenuous relation to nomadic lifestyles or otherwise - there were Germans in Lederhosens smoking pipe, straight out of Tolkien. Eastern Europeans on a yak. Americans dressed as cowboys and hunting dogs taller than their child handlers. A few Scottish dudes in quilts, walking advertisements for the Scottish Highland Games. Archers from around the world, with shawls and leather and curved bows wrapped in python skin, dressed to kill. There are also eagles, perched on arms, resting on wood stands, their unblinking eyes staring past, into, and over the world.

Near a stream, locals had pitched their yurts, and as the sun rose they baked bread, cooked plov. Men stood on top of racing steeds, juggled things, did tricks, impressing the quiet black steeds standing peaceful by the side. This was as far from my city life as it gets. On the third day, I lay under the shade of a glade nursing a hangover from a night of drinking too much kurmiss and vodka. Quiet horsemen wandered by and cast me with their quiet judgement - the gentle grunts of their horses faded into the valley as they disappeared down the slopes. The Games were advertised with a sense of kinetic and raw energy, but in the valley, as I stood within the nexus of the nomad’s old ways, this was one of the most peaceful moments I had ever felt.