Original subtitles

(foreign music)

As a reporter,

I've traveled the Middle East for many years.

It's an area that has always fascinated me

but in my work, I've mainly covered its war zones,

its crises, and its tragedies.

This journey, which takes me down the Silk Road

in the footsteps of Marco Polo,

gives me the opportunity of exploring

the great historical and cultural significance

of this part of the world.

Its ancient melting pots of peoples and civilizations

that have contributed so much to our own.

(foreign music)

Majestic Kyrgyzstan a world of steppes and mountains.

A land of nomads.

A Turkic ethnic group

whose name means Those Who Roam the Steppe.

The Kyrgyz warrior and pastoral tribes

arrived here in the late Middle Ages.

They harnessed this bleak yet magnificent region.

(gentle music)

The sprawling city of Osh lies in the Fergana Valley,

close to the border with Uzbekistan.

It was a major stop for Silk Road caravans,

and its bazaar still places a vital role.

(foreign music)

We've just crossed the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border,

and on this side of the border,

you really do feel as if you're on the edge of the world.

Crossing the border was extremely complicated,

with all sorts of formalities.

We had to walk across with our bags.

Everything was scrutinized and thoroughly searched.

We weren't allowed to film anything, obviously.

On this side, it's more anarchic.

It doesn't seem so centralized.

It's very appealing too,

and has a bit of a wild west feel to it.

(foreign music)

(crowd speaking in foreign language)

Here's proof that the Kyrgyz remain basically nomadic.

These are their cradles.

The special thing about them

is that they can be taken apart,

because the nomads are often on the move.

And they have another distinctive feature, these cradles.

They can be colored in velvet, like this.

This is because the nomads are often outdoors,

and their babies need to be protected

from the sun and insects.

The city of Osh lies at the crossroads

of two Silk Road routes.

There's the main route that heads east to China,

and the route that dips south,

climbs the mountainous region of the Pamir,

crosses Afghanistan, and leads to India.

In Osh, traders would rest, stock up,

or sell their goods at the bazaar,

which is still one of the largest in central Asia.

(gentle chiming music)

Some may have also prayed at Sulaiman-Too,

or Solomon's Throne.

The Kyrgyz believe King Solomon of the Bible is buried here.

It's a sacred place for many of them,

who come here to relieve back pain

by sliding down this magical rock.

A young student, Nurjamal Tokombaeva

wants to show her city to the few tourists,

mostly mountaineers and treckers,

who venture as far as Osh.

Are you really sure King Solomon of the Bible

is buried here, or is it a local legend?

There are several versions.

Some people say King Solomon was really buried here.

It's a fact.

Until the 17th century

the Kyrgyz were predominantly shamanic

before converting to Islam.

Are there still traces of shamanic rituals here?

The only witnesses,

the only evidence that remains are these caves.

This spot is a place of pilgrimage and prayer.

Praying to these stone statues

is one of the vestiges of shamanism.

What other myths and beliefs

are associated with Sulaiman-Too Mountain?

There are great many caves,

including Mother Cradle Cave.

People who can't conceive come here to make wishes.

Another very strange myth,

before these steps were built, if a woman managed

to get to the top of the mountain unaided,

she was regarded as a good wife.

It's also said

that the prophet Muhammad himself came here to pray.

But there's no mention in the Quran

that he came to Kyrgyzstan.

It's regarded as a myth.

There's no evidence to support it.

Do you as a Kyrgyz feel closest to the Western world,

the Turkic sphere, or to China?

You're just 300 kilometers away, after all.

In my view, each of these countries

has contributed to Kyrgyzstan's development.

Russian is still one of our country's official languages.

As for China, there's intensive trade between us.

And then Islam is another thing

the Kyrgyz people and the Turks have in common.

(upbeat acoustic music)

Throughout the 19th century,

the Russians and the British who came

from the Indian empire to the south

were locked in intense rivalry for control

of this part of Central Asia.

It gave rise to fierce competition

with spies disguised as pilgrims and scientific researchers.

And it was Rudyard Kipling of Jungle Book fame

who called it "The Great Game",

while the Russians referred to it as "Turnir Teney",

or the Tournament of the Shadows.

But as you can see here, the Russians won.

(upbeat acoustic music)

This statue of Lenin is one of the largest still standing

in the former Soviet Union, even though the nomadic Kyrgyz

suffered at the hands of the Soviets

who tried to forcibly settle them.

(upbeat acoustic music)

(birds chirping)

Kyrgyzstan's strategic position

at the crossroads of Asia's different civilizations

still gives rise to power struggles, due in large part

to the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism.

(calm flute music)

(water splashing)

A vestige of Islam's introduction to the region,

the Uzgen mausoleum complex

at the far end of the Fergana Valley

includes a 44 meter high brick minaret

erected under the Kara-Khanid dynasty.

Bizarrely, this Muslim monument

is topped with a Buddhist symbol as if to illustrate

how the Turkic and Mongol peoples of Central Asia

have always been torn between the rising and setting suns.

(calm flute music)

Kyrgyzstan can definitely be described

as the epicenter of the Silk Road.

All the north-south and east-west routes

of the old caravan road meet here.

Known as the Switzerland of Central Asia

these mountains cover 90% of the country.

It's also the site of one of the most

important battles in history: the Battle of Talas

between the Arab and Chinese armies in 751 CE.

(gentle music)

Few battles have so influenced

the linguistic, cultural, and religious map of the world.

Talas marks the point

where the Chinese stop their expansion to the west.

(camera clicks)

A buffer zone, isolated due to its high altitude

and never-ending winters,

Kyrgyzstan has a population of 5 million,

and three times as many livestock

in an area almost as big as Great Britain.

(goats bleating)

(gentle music)

(distant shouting)

In the summer months,

many families head to the mountain pastures

to live is nomads with their herds.

The villages built by the Soviets in the valleys

are all deserted from late April to October

when the snow makes the Mountain trails impassable

until the following spring.

(upbeat music)

Their ancestors conquered every empire

and every great city of Asia

among Genghis Khan's savage hordes.

Many hordes then integrated,

becoming Chinese or Iranian over time.

Not the Kyrgyz though.

They returned to the harshness of the steppe and mountains.

(birds chirping)

Given these landscapes, who could blame them

for preferring their traditional yurts

to the comfort of modern cities?

Each family drives their herds to the clan's pastures.

One such pasture lies on the shores of Lake Song Kul.

This is the ancestral land of Issyk,

one of the 40 great tribes

of the Confederation of Kyrgyz nomads.

It's so beautiful, it's a truly remarkable landscape.

There's the steppe, but as well as that,

it's the middle of summer

and there's this melted snow all around us.

We're 3,200 meters above sea level,

the air is very very cool.

There's an extraordinary sensation of freedom.

There are no fences, no roads,

no electricity pylons, no hassle.

Hello!

(soft foreign music)

(speaking foreign language)

How are you?

Good, thanks.

Alfred.

Go in.

I can go in?

Okay then, let's go.

Thank you.

Hello.

Shall I sit here?

Oh, this is nice, being served tea like this.

What a spread.

The nomads are unbelievably hospitable.

You turn up totally unannounced and within five minutes

there's bread, jam, churned cream, and tea.

Almaz, that's the boy's name.

Hello, Almaz!

He's a shy one, Almaz.

Being knee high to a grasshopper,

I bet he's more at ease on a horse than with strangers.

This is the nomad's great delicacy, fermented mare's milk.

Alright, I'm gonna try it.

Come what may.

William of Rubruck who was Louis IX's envoy

to the Mongols in the 13th century

said it had the same rough taste as a champagne

and wasn't quite as good.

There are two schools of thought.

(speaking in foreign language)

It's really really strong.

It actually tastes like cheese.

I think it's slightly alcoholic.

There's alcohol in it.

It's tasty.

It's like vodka.

Vodka?!

Yeah, makes you slightly tipsy.

Woohoo! (laughter)

(foreign music)

Among the Kyrgyz, the yurts belong to the women.

While the men are away

in the alpine pastures with their herds,

guiding caravans over the mountain passes, or at war,

the wives manage the household.

(horses whinny)

The historian Herodotus described the yurt

back in the 5th century BCE.

Swathed in felt made of sheep's, goat's, or yak's wool,

these yurts consist of a lattice of flexible wooden poles

set up directly on the ground.

They take 2 hours to put up.

The whole family can sleep in them,

huddled around the stove even when the temperature

plummets to 40 degrees below zero.

As you can see, there are no forests in these parts.

So to make fires, to keep warm and cook,

the Kyrgyz nomads use dried cow dung.

It's here, drying.

It explains the slightly fatty smell of the smoke,

which isn't very pleasant.

But, as it's very windy all's well.

Legend has it, a Kyrgyz chief once gave 1,000 horses

as a betrothal gift to a Chinese emperor

in exchange for his daughter's hand.

So the princess, Liu Chujian left the refinements

of court life in Beijing to marry the nomad chief

and live in the alpine pastures.

She's still famous in Kyrgyzstan

for her poems, including this:

"The round tent is my palace

Its walls are made of felt

Dried meat is my only food

Kumis is my drink

Endlessly I dream of my country and my heart is all bruised"

(foreign music)

The big deal on the shores of Lake Song Kul is Buzkashi.

A dangerous and violent sport

played by the by the steppe's finest horsemen.

Buzkashi or Ulak Tartysh in Kyrgyz, literally goat grabbing,

involves battling for the headless carcass of an animal,

which serves as the ball.

(distant shouts)

In a display of skill and daring,

the two teams of riders attempt to carry the carcass

across the goal line.

It's pretty much no holds barred.

And very few games end without injury.

(foreign music)

(whistles and shouting)

Along the Silk Road I've talked a lot about Marco Polo,

Ibn Battuta, Nicola Bouvier, and Amin Maalouf.

But when I see these guys

racing across the vast steppe in a game of Buzkashi,

I can't help but thinking of Joseph Kessel's The Horseman,

a marvelous romantic book that has fired the imagination

of generations of school kids.

For me, it's a dream come true.

(speaking in foreign language)

Are we allowed to hit each other in the face with a nagaika?

No, no, only with your horse.

It's in the rules.

Are you allowed to get your horse to bite another horse,

or kick another horse, or ride it very hard?

These horses are wild.

You have to try to not get bitten.

It pulls and then if you let go it can happen.

They're wild after all.

They don't understand our language.

And are these incredibly tough, competent, brave horses

Genghis Khan's horses or Silk Road horses?

Or are they Kyrgyz horses?

They're Kyrgyz horses.

Kyrgyz thoroughbreds.

These horses here can climb the mountains

and scale the rocks like mountaineers.

We're at 3,200 meters above sea level.

The passes are at 4,000 meters.

Yes. They're tough and strong.

Is it more of a work horse, or a horse for sport?

It's Universal.

For horse races too.

It can do everything!

That's right.

(excited yelling)

(foreign music)

(cheering and shouting)

Aibek, where did Ulak Tartysh originate?

Ulak Tartysh is the legacy of our forefathers.

It's a game for real men, a dangerous game.

You can fall, get injured, and so on.

The jijit, the young men would play this game.

They were future warriors.

It was a way to train for war.

How to ride a horse,

how to pick things off the ground,

wrest something from the enemy's hands.

(foreign music)

(cheering and clapping)

(speaking in foreign language)

Even though Buzkashi is no longer

a way of training for war

as it was in the days of Attila and Genghis Khan,

it is by no means just a game.

These ferocious matches actually enable the nomads

to select the best horses among the winners

to preserve the combativeness and agility

of this breed, which does them proud.

(birds chirping)

(cheery acoustic music)

It's impossible not to fall under the spell

of this country and its people.

These vast unspoiled spaces

where there is a love of freedom,

a taste for the simple life and the great outdoors.

(cheery acoustic music)

Although remote, the Kyrgyz Mountains

are less isolated than in the past.

Kyrgyzstan's peaks may seem timeless,

yet time has caught up with them.

Take this highway built by the Chinese

to cross the country from east to west.

It's part of China's

massive multi-billion New Silk Road project,

which aims to link Central Asia to the Caspian Sea.

(birds chirping)

(foreign music)

A land of nomads and Yuits, Kyrgyzstan has little to offer

in the way of historical remains.

Isolated on the steppe, this unusual brick tower

close to the capital, Bishkek,

highlights Kyrgyzstan's place on the edge of two worlds.

This tower dominates the ancient site of Burana,

capital of the Kara-Khanid empire.

It was built in the 11th century as a minaret.

But around it are remains of earlier Buddhist temples

and Nestorian Christian crosses.

It's impossible not to think of the stone tower

mentioned by the classical geographer Ptolemy

where, according to legend,

caravaneers from Persia and China

met regularly to exchange goods.

The minaret actually post dates

the legendary stone tower by over 1,000 years.

No one knows for sure where the tower stood.

And several other sites claim the honor

of being the vestige of the ancient border.

But there's no doubt though, that Burana stands

as testimony to Kyrgyz traditions.

Thanks, in part to these funerary steles.

There's something moving about these nomad figures,

which even after death stand proudly facing the steppe.

Their faces burned by the Sun and whipped by the wind.

This is very interesting, a Bronze Age petroglyph

dating from 800 to 500 BCE,

which represents a totemic animal.

It's a kind of big wild sheep with huge spiraling horns.

This animal, which is endemic to Central Asia,

was named after Marco Polo.

So here's the celebrated Marco Polo.

These old Stones erected on the steppe might see modest

but they perfectly symbolize the Kyrgyz nomad's nature.

Pure, serene, and unchanging.

The Soviets may have built

apartment blocks and kolkhozes here,

just as the Chinese are building roads today,

yet I get the impression

it would take a whole lot more to dent Kyrgyzstan's soul.

(gentle music)

(birds chirping)

The descendants of Genghis Khan's horde

still possess a love the great outdoors.

Like these retired Bishkek police officers

who prefer to gather around yurts

when it comes to celebrating the good old days

with plenty of vodka and Russian songs.

(lively foreign music)

(thunder cracks)

The most striking feature of this nomadic culture

may be the storytellers.

Known as Manaschis, they recite the monumental epic Manas,

the national poem, whose half a million lines

are passed down orally.

(singing in foreign language)

Something happened to me.

I used to work as a legal expert.

One day I saw spirits.

First those of very large people,

then characters from the Manas epic.

Only after did I see the spirit of Manas in person.

After that, I was very sick and a Healer came to see me

because in his dream, Manas had commanded him

to come find me and tell me I was predestined

to recite the Manas.

(singing in foreign language)

How long did it take you to learn

these thousands and thousands of lines?

How did you go about it?

I've been reciting the Manas for more than 10 years now.

And even after so many years reciting it

and knowing it in its entirety,

I've never managed to recite the whole epic,

simply because of the time it would take.

I Know It off by heart.

I had 5 or 6 difficult years

trying to enter the world of the Manas.

(singing in foreign language)

When I started reciting the Manas

for the first 30 minutes or even hour,

I'm aware of what's going on around me.

After that, you don't see anything anymore.

You're totally immersed in Manas world.

You're in Manas world, and you recite what's going on in it.

In that world.

It's something even we Manaschis cannot comprehend.

(singing in foreign language)

A healer and poet, Uyana Ismailov admits

he's a defender of the old religion of the shamans.

Although Islam prohibits it, he still prays to Tengri,

the supreme spirit to whom

his ancestors made incantations.

To the north, the Tian Shan, or Celestial Mountains,

rise to a height of 7,000 meters.

To the south, the Pamirs the Hindu Kush

climb to over 7,000 meters too,

before joining the Himalayas.

The caravaneers had to leave their horses

and Bactrian camels to rent yaks,

the only animal capable of tackling the eternal snow.

Even in such conditions, the trails were only accessible

for a few months each summer.

When you climb the valleys toward eastern Kyrgyzstan

and the Chinese border, you can see the roads

are no more tarmacked than they were

when Marco Polo crossed the Pamirs.

Our Venetian adventurer admits he suffered quite badly

from altitude sickness during the crossing to China.

(calm piano music)

(dog barks)

(motorcycle revs)

The last Kyrgyz stop on the Silk Road is Tash Rabat.

(somber music)

Tash Rabat means Stone Fortress.

In this region where all the buildings

are made of sun-dried bricks,

it's the only one to have survived.

Archaeologists believe it may have

originally been a Nestorian Christian church.

We're at an altitude of 3,100 meters above sea level,

in the middle of the Celestial Mountains, the Tian Shan.

China is just 85 kilometers away now.

All the Caravans that travel between

the cities of Samarkand in Uzbekistan

and Kashgar in China went through this valley.

Tash Rabat was a bustling depot,

as well as a military stronghold

with its dormitories for soldiers, its prisons,

and its warehouses to last the winter.

To me, few places seem so imbued with the presence

of Marco Polo and his adventure companions.

Nowadays the road to China skirts this mountain

and the Tash Rabat trail is a dead end.

So this Valley is one of the most isolated in the country.

Only a few families and their herds

brave the cold in these unspoiled, wide open spaces.

(foreign music)