I WENT TO TUVA AND DRANK VODKA WITH NOMADS

Note: A modified version of this article appeared in the Summer issue of JUMP magazine. This is the original.

(photo courtesy of Helen Stuhr-Rommereim [who was also on this trip])

We woke up early, set out early. A long bus ride out into the steppe. We were to meet nomads. Grass and grass and maybe a small hill. The horizon was beset with very tall mountains with snow on the top. The bus was filled with people; four American visitors, one newly arrived Nigerian student, and about twenty local students. We had already started to drink cheap local beer out of two liter plastic bottles. The boys in the back had started to sing. The professors in the front shook their heads, probably thinking fondly of their youth or something.

 Take a map of Asia and find the geographical center. According to the natives, this is where Tuva is. The south of Russia, in the center, technically Siberia, on the border with Mongolia. Most of the buildings looked like Russia, all of the people looked central Asian. We had started in Kyzyl, the capital, and were heading out towards the mountains, beyond some small nameless village we stopped in for various foodstuffs.

 I had been in Russia for about seven months at this point, had taken this trip under the guise of working in the university and ‘spreading goodwill’ on behalf of the Fulbright program, but mostly because I had recently emerged from a period of serious purposeful solitude. Being around fellow Americans stationed in various Siberian cities felt good. I had felt pretty awful for months already. Also Tuva is where throat singing is from.

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